A huge crowd of mourners turned out Sunday at the Bath Seventh-day Baptist Church to bid farewell to Alvin Allen, the elderly farmer who was killed by the police in the St Thomas community last month.

Member of Parliament for the area Dr Fenton Ferguson remembered Allen as a “decent man” who faced injustice.

“Today for him is a day of reflection, a day to say that we believe that an injustice has been done and it’s time we right it,” Dr Ferguson said during the funeral service.

“As your member of Parliament I will not allow this to die,” the MP added.

At the same time, Dr Ferguson urged residents of the hilly community to allow justice “to take its course”.

His call for calm followed on the heels of an address by Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) caretaker Delano Seiveright, in which he said that Allen was the victim of a “vicious cycle of extra-judicial killings by known and very rogue members of the police” force.

“Mr Alvin Allen, a farmer here in St Thomas may very well be a victim of wickedness, evil and a gross abuse of power by men whose sole job is to uphold the law,” Seiveright said in his rousing address.

“What will come out of this people ask each and everyday? Nothing, probably nothing. Because, ladies and gentlemen, despite the fact that many thousands of children, men and women have been gunned down by rogue elements in the police force over the years, they have pretty much all gotten away,” he said.

He said the system was faulty and seemed only good at punishing phone thieves while powerful businessmen, politicians and rogue cops, who breach the laws of the country, go free.

Sixty-three-year-old Allen was reportedly killed on a ganja farm in Bath, St Thomas by members of the security forces on May 18.

The police said that the killing was as a result of a shoot-out with gunmen, and later slapped gun-related charges on 30-year-old farmer Dorsham Prince.

However, Prince’s loved ones have accused the cops of framing him.

Allen’s death resulted in angry residents mounting fiery roadblocks on the main road in the Bath community.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, Mayor of Morant Bay Ludlow Mathison said that it was with fun that he remembered Allen, adding that “so much blood has been shed in this country that only God can help us”.

“Your loss is also our pain,” he said to mourning family members as he described Allen as a loyal Comrade.

Pastor Garfield Miller, in his fiery sermon, said that both major political parties have failed the country, and that only “Jesus can help us”.

He urged those who have been hurt by the killing to stop and evaluate their own lives because they too have hurt others during the course of their lives.

He said that although “we expect justice to be served, we must be forgiven”.

— Paul Henry