KINGSTON, Jamaica – Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) is calling for the resignation of Police Commissioner Owen Ellington.

“Commissioner Ellington has failed to keep the murder rate under control; he has failed to improve the police clear-up rate for murder; he has presided over the highest cumulative rate of police fatal shootings ever seen in Jamaica,” the JFJ said in a release Friday morning. “It is time for him to go.”

Citing several fatal shooting which the JFJ said “occur in circumstances which suggest extra-judicial killings by police”, the human rights group said the rate of fatal shootings for 2013 is above last year’s, adding that they have seen three months in which “more than one person a day was killed by police”. This they said culminated in the “killing of 36 persons by the police in the month of October”.

The JFJ has asserted that Commissioner Ellington’s “failure to control the brutality of the men under his command, and the failure to reduce the rate of fatal police shootings by proper planning and control of operation are unacceptable”.

The group also said that they have not heard any solutions for this “unacceptable” use of force by police officers coming out of the police commissioner’s weekly bulletins to his men, and added that this “failure to ensure accountability for the use of force by members of the JCF, by itself, warrants the resignation” of the police commissioner.

Additionally, the JFJ said that Commissioner Ellington has “failed to bring about a sustained reduction in the murder rate”, which the organisaition said analysts have predicted has begun an increase after the reductions that followed the extradition of Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, “because no strategic improvements in crime prevention or community-based policing have taken place under his leadership over the past three years.

“The Commissioner, and successive Governments, were warned that the ‘mano duro’ tactics being employed by Mr Ellington and his men, COULD NOT produce sustainable reductions in crime,” the JFJ said.

“Mr Ellington’s failures display either a lack of will or competence to handle the challenging monster of crime and they inspire no confidence in his leadership or ability going forward,” the release continued. “Police leaders who continue to disregard the fundamental rights of Jamaicans have no place in the force.

“The fact that several years after being at the helm the Commissioner has been unable to have success in taming the crime monster and the brutality of some of the police under his command, and unable to reassure Jamaicans that a better day is coming would indicate that the time has come for him to go,” the JFJ stated.

The JFJ then went on to call on Commissioner Ellington “to hold himself accountable for his failings” and to do the “honourable” thing and tender his resignation to the Police Services Commission.

The human rights body also called on the Government to move swiftly to appoint someone with the “requisite skills, competence and crime prevention know-how”, to restore a sense of confidence in the hope for the return of the rule of law to Jamaica.