This is the 16th in a series of close encounters with death by Jamaicans, some of them in prominent positions of the society

SUPERINTENDENT Gladys Brown Campbell is not only regarded as one of the brightest and best on the Jamaica Constabulary Force, she personifies courage.

The operational head of the Centre for Investigation of Sexual Offences & Child Abuse (CISOCA), Brown Campbell’s journey through life came seconds close to being terminated on an ill-fated day in September 2003, at a time when she had made her mark on an organisation that previously would have turned up its nose on academic advancement within its ranks.

The writing was on the wall that the young woman from Whitehall, West St Thomas was destined for great things, having hopped, skipped and jumped over several ‘potholes’ that threatened to derail her on the road to success.

She was the recipient of a Grade Nine Achievement scholarship that took her from Claude McKay Secondary School in Clarendon to Edwin Allen High, famed for its superior athletic programme, but dropped out in the 10th grade due to financial problems. This was compounded by her getting pregnant at just 17, while on even shakier financial ground.

“It was a 99.9 per cent chance that I would not really reach where I am today, but I beat the odds. When you drop out at 10th grade in those days you basically don’t know anything, so I am selftaught. I ended up leaving Clarendon and going back to living in St Thomas where my son’s father is from,” she told the Jamaica Observer in an interview last week.

Back in Clarendon, she started attending evening classes under the HEART programme, was successful in the two CXC subjects that she could afford to take, and launched her career in the police force on September 12, 1988, the day that Hurricane Gilbert devastated the island.

It had been a toss up between going to teacher’s college at Mico, or entering the constabulary, as both organisations requested that she start on the same day. The police force won in the end — a decision that was to change her life.

It was relatively smooth sailing after she graduated from cop school and was assigned to the beat & foot patrol in downtown Kingston. But while she was on an upward trajectory, especially after reading for her bachelor’s degree in English and later sharpening her skills with the acquisition of her law degree and being called to the Jamaican Bar, Brown Campbell was in for a rude awakening just a few days after graduating law school.

“I had just graduated the Saturday before from the Norman Manley Law School and the Monday paper carried me receiving two awards from the law school, and by 2 o’clock the day it came as a news flash that I had been attacked and cut up and I was fighting for my life, because it was that bad,” recalled Brown Campbell.

“Immediately after leaving law school, I was sent to the DPP’s (Director of Public Prosecutions) office, as part of a new thing that Mr (Kent) Pantry was trying, because the police is supposed to be on the side of justice, so Mr Pantry, the DPP, had this idea that he could try

to have the police right there on spot with the DPP. So I became the first police officer to be sent to work at the DPP’s office as a lawyer.

On Monday, September 27, 2003, close to 1 o’clock in the afternoon, the attorney went to use the Automated Teller Machine (ATM) at the Scotia Centre close to the DPP’s office. What was to follow exposed the young woman to a wretched side of Jamaica that has for long affected thousands of its citizens. She was mugged.

“I went on my lunch break, but utilised it to get some money from the ATM. Successfully got my cash and was on my way back to the DPP’s office with my handbag on my left shoulder, when upon reaching the corner of Temple Lane and Port Royal Street, a young man came out suddenly from Temple Lane, while I was walking on the sidewalk,” Brown Campbell recalled.

There was no warning, no negotiation, no verbal confrontation, just the slash of a very sharp knife.

“He just came up, bam on the hand with the dagger — ‘hey gyal, gi mi di money!’ That was the first approach. There was no time for me to negotiate. I wasn’t given a chance to resist. I was walking and talking on the cellphone, and this is something that I would not recommend anybody to do. Once you are on the road, be alert.

“He stabbed me on the left arm and the phone fell. I had the handbag on my shoulder with the gun, because I am more lefthanded. I had the phone in my hand and the money wrapped up in my hand. When the phone fell, the money was still in my hand.

Her efforts to reason with the man fell on deaf ears.

“I was saying, ‘wait nuh, wait nuh, let me give you the money, but the very sight of the blood got him excited and he started to stab at me, so I started to use my physical training that I had got at training school, to defend myself, because he was coming at me fast and furious.

“There was no time to dip in my handbag and get my weapon, because if I had done that I would have had to take my eyes off him. So while I was there focusing on him, I was there using this arm (left) to block the majority of the blows that were coming at my face and my chest and so I received a cut right down inside my left hand,” said Brown Campbell, demonstrating her tussle with the madman.

Her stab wounds were a mere precursor to the gruesome horror that was to come as she tried to fight off the crazed attacker.

“When he realised that I was physically blocking the blows, he slashed my belly and my intestines fell out. I was still fighting him with my entrails hanging. I realised that I was mortally wounded and so I decided that if I am going to die, let me die fighting. So I immediately grabbed the blade of the knife, because I am dead anyway, while he held the handle and immediately as I held the knife, it cut a big piece of flesh off my hand and it fell in the road,” she said.

Brown Campbell had an epiphany then.

“I realised that this man was not interested in my money… he wanted to kill me. At the time I didn’t understand what he was after, because I couldn’t decide if somebody had sent him to kill me, because I had problems then, and it was a possibility,” the senior officer said.

She said she grabbed him by the collar and intensified her efforts to save herself or at the very least, die fighting. She had seen his face and knew he would not want to let her live at that point.

“I actually decided that since I am going to die, let me not die like a hog, let me fight and die a brave person. Let me at least attempt to defend myself and not just give up and cower in a corner like a cornered animal. Let me fight like a natural animal who is cornered, because when you are cornered you are going to fight,” said the former CCN information officer.

By now covered in blood, the policewoman realised that she was slowly losing consciousness and that the chances of her surviving were slim. She recalled that although the violent attack attracted several spectators, none ventured forward to assist. Some said later that they had thought that it was a lovers’ quarrel.

“We were there fighting and people gathered around us like they were watching a cockfight. Nobody attempted to help. Afterwards they said they thought it was me and my boyfriend fighting, so therefore they didn’t want to interfere or intervene. And you are talking about this boy who has a cut off pants and a T-shirt, and I am in my suit and heels and stocking,” she said.

She remembers being stunned that no cars were on the normally busy road as she and the man fought.

“After a while, I pulled him down on the ground, because he was taller than me and I was losing strength and we were there in the busy Port Royal Street, and would you believe that not one vehicle passed during that period when we were down there, and you know Port Royal Street — extremely busy — you can’t cross, and at 1 o’clock in the day at that.

“While we were on the ground, the guy heard a siren coming and he knew that it was a police siren, so he got up and ran and that’s how the fight ended. By the time he had got up and left, my world was spinning. I was dazed, I had lost a lot of blood by then, and my handbag was on the ground still open.

“I had one cellular phone for myself and a phone that somebody had left in my vehicle, those dropped out of the bag, there was a little make-up purse that looked like a money purse, people came took up phones, took up purse, and run gone. Bicycle man rode up, took up what he is to take up, rode off. Nobody touched me. I was still on the ground trying to ease up to stand and it took me a long while to get the strength to steady my world so that I could stand, and when I stood, the first thing I did was to just scoop up my intestines and hold them. I couldn’t stand up straight. There was not one person who would say let them move my hand and put their hand (to the wound), although somebody ran from over the shop with some paper towel and gave it to me,” said Brown Campbell.

Finally, a vehicle came along, but it was the spectators who had gathered that had to force the driver to pick up the wounded policewoman.

People jumped on the front of the car, urging the driver to take her to the nearby Kingston Public Hospital. They didn’t know then that the driver was terrified by the sight of blood, a fact that emerged later.

“Not one person got into that car with me. They basically put me in the back of the car and I went to the hospital and I said ‘God, just give me five minutes’, because I knew that KPH was just up the top (of the road). In four minutes we reached KPH, and as we reached there, my hands just dropped and somebody took over and that was it.”

She passed out and began yet another gruelling phase in the battle for her life.

“They gave me oxygen, revived me and I was able to tell them that I had a gun in the bag, that they were to call CCN (Constabulary Communication Network) and let them come and collect it.

She heard later that the medical team did not think she would recover.

“They thought that I wasn’t going to live. I heard that I ‘died’ in theatre and they were able to revive me. They had difficulty because I had previously done two major surgeries and a minor, so I had what they called adhesions (scar tissue). So when they were cutting through they were cutting through vital intestines. So I understand that they lost me in theatre. There were some anxious moments, but I understand that a certain doctor came and took over and I made it. When I came back around they said I had a particular doctor to thank. I am still hoping that one day I will meet that person,” she said.

Brown Campbell lost portions of her intestines during that life-saving surgery and spent 16 days in hospital and several weeks recovering at home before she went back on the firing line.

She often reflects on how close she had come to meeting St Peter (the angel at the gates of heaven, according to the Bible).

“When he got up and ran and I realised that I was dying, I said God, give me a chance.”

The hunt for Brown Campbell’s attacker began on the same day it occoured, with Superintendent Cornwall “Bigga” Ford leading a team of crimefighters in the search. Brown Campbell’s son, Dwayne Spencer, a member of the Jamaica Defence Force, and some of his army colleagues also joined in.

The savage assault on the female cop elicited outrage from callers to radio stations who urged eyewitnesses to cooperate with the police.

Some people told the police that they saw a man fleeing the scene with a bloody T-shirt wrapped around his hand, heading toward Tower Street. The man, Omarae Phillips, was caught 10 days later, after his house was razed by a mysterious fire and his family forced to move from the area.

These days Brown Campbell, who has so far risen through the ranks, and not as part of the accelerated officer programme, says she is preparing herself for further challenges that may arise in the force. Practising law will likely come when she leaves the constabulary, she said.

“All along I wanted to do law. One of the things that led me into law was being told by a family member that I would not come to anything — the ‘black and ugly’ syndrome which says ‘you nah come to nutten’. That was what pushed me to prove the person wrong,” said Brown Campbell.

Now a board member of Edwin Allen High, she has written a book titled Patriarchy in the Jamaica Constabulary Force: Its impact on Gender Equality, which looks at hardships women face in the police force. She also has a Master’s degree in National Security and Strategic Management from the UWI.