Public Defender Arlene Harrison Henry has charged that there was little or no thought given to logistics before the state of public emergency (SOE) was launched in St James on January 18, 2018.

Harrison Henry, in a submission to Parliament last week, also claimed that “very little thought, if any”, was given to the processing, accommodation, health and well-being of detainees.

“Absolutely no arrangement was put in place for the handling of detainees,” the public defender’s submission stated.

Harrison Henry and her team appeared before the Internal and External Affairs Committee of Parliament to give details of the Office of the Public Defender’s (OPD’s) findings into the state of affairs in St James under the SOE.

According to the report, it was only when the OPD and the Legal Aid Council brought to public attention the fact that detainees were in a cage, that the police “quickly reduced the number of detainees in the cage by placing them in cells on the cell block”.

Additionally, the public defender said there seems to be uncertainty as to the operational command and the administrative command, on the part of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF).

“This dominant uncertainty led to the police at the divisional level adopting the posture that they, the police, were mere keepers of persons detained, and that was the extent of their responsibility. So poor was the logistics and ill-prepared were the authorities that in an attempt to alleviate the overcrowding of the lock-ups in St James, a truckload of male detainees was transported to St Andrew. They were supposed to have been accommodated at the Horizon Adult Remand Centre facility… however, when the truck arrived at ‘Horizon’ the Department of Corrections denied any knowledge of such arrangement and indeed had no place prepared for that influx of detainees,” the report said. “In the end, the truck had to turn around and return to Montego Bay without a soul disembarking.”

The public defender said that, according to the St James divisional commander, Senior Superintendent Wilfred Campbell, at the time of her office’s first visit to Freeport Police Station in late January 2018, the police had no responsibility for apprehending anybody. “That, he said, was the role and responsibility of the JDF, and that the JCF was only responsible for the keeping of persons detained by the JDF and sent them to police… Even if the senior superintendent was to be believed, his understanding was entirely inconsistent with the execution of the operation, and indeed with that which was transpiring on the ground,” the report said.

The OPD said it surmised that Campbell’s approach had set the tone for the treatment of people held in the police lock-ups in the parish.

Additionally, Harrison Henry said her team had found that family members were not informed about the status of their loved ones who were detained, and complained bitterly about a lack of information from the police. She said some people even spent nights under a shed at the front of the police station yard, awaiting word from the police.

She said that while some officers assisted in providing information or made calls for detainees to inform their families that they were locked up, there was a largely cavalier attitude displayed by the police, made worse with each extension of the emergency measure.

Last month the legislature voted in favour of an extension of the state of public emergency in St James, to January 31, 2019.