Dear Editor,

There has recently been renewed reviews of the operations into Tivoli Gardens in May 2010. The three-person panel, after one year and 10 months, delivered a two-volume report of nearly 1,000 pages. The report was sent to the governor general in early June 2016 and passed to the prime minster and Cabinet.

The Government has the responsibility to review the recommendations of the report.

There were two important recommendations made by the commissioners which have been the subject of much debate.

Firstly, that the prime minister should present an apology in Parliament to the Tivoli Gardens community for the alleged severe treatment meted out to them by the security forces. A year and four months have passed and this has not been done.

The second recommendation deals with the series of adverse findings reported against several police and army officers. The recommendations had not been formally dealt with by the authorities and it was left to the new incoming Police Commissioner George Quallo to do something about the matter. He appointed an administrative review committee (ARC) including Wray Palmer, Professor Kent Pantry, Errol Johnson, Dr Hilton McDavid, Rev Canon Hartley Perrin, with support from police legal council members and a police secretariat. The panel had 11 meetings and did extensive review of the specific charges. It found it incomprehensible that former Assistant Commission of Police Les Green never gave evidence at the enquiry, as well as determined there were unreasonable expectations and biased positions of the police and army and pages of charges easily dismissed. The report was a devastating commentary on the commission’s adverse findings on the security forces.

When the ARC report was released, there was a storm of criticism against its findings, some from the public defender and Jamaicans for Justice. The police chief asked that the ARC report be passed to the Police Service Commission (PSC) for review. The question remains as to how long the PSC will hold the report before taking a position on it. Some of our leading security officers have been denied justice for a long time. Jamaicans need to rise up and call for the right things to be done.

The officers receiving ‘adverse findings’ against them, including the former commissioner of police and the former head of the Jamaica Defence Force, should bond together and challenge the PSC.

The security forces did a wonderful job of dealing with the Tivoli situation and should be recognised for that job. It’s full time now!

Alfred W Sangster

President Emeritus

University of Technology, Jamaica

alfredwsangster@gmail.com