Chief Justice Bryan Sykes yesterday issued a scathing response to the Government’s planned redeployment of trained police from the Protective Services Division to front-line crime-fighting duties and replace them with private security for public officials.

Noting that the plan excludes parish court judges from automatic protection by police bodyguards, Sykes described it as “ill-conceived”, adding that it has grave implications for the judiciary, given the State’s commitment to dismantling organised crime.

Addressing journalists during the second ‘A Virtual Conversation with the Judiciary’ forum, Sykes urged the Government to rethink the plan.

“The policy, as I understand it, is that you are going to have two tiers; tier one where you have some judges who will be protected by members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), in terms of providing close protection services, and those are judges of the Supreme Court and judges of the Court of Appeal,” he said.

Now, from looking through the document there is no mention of the masters, because the document specifically says chief justice and puisne judges, so the masters are clearly excluded from that. To the best of my reading and recollection they are not even mentioned in category two,” the chief justice noted.

Masters are basically a subset of superior court judges who adjudicate specialised types of trials, case management, and in some jurisdictions dispute resolution or specific issues referred by judges.

Added Sykes: “Then, in category two, where you find the judges of the parish courts — most of whom are women, most of whom travel long distances, sometimes as long as two hours in the mornings to get to court and two hours in the evening coming from court, travelling along lonely roads — my understanding of the policy is that these judges will not receive automatic protection from the Jamaica Constabulary Force, because the presumption seems to be that they are at low risk,” Sykes said.

This, the chief justice said, is where members of the judiciary have an issue.

“We have grave concerns about that because in a situation in which the Executive says it is taking active steps to deal with organised crime — and many of the crimes committed by persons involved in organised criminal activity are indeed tried in the parish courts — so, in that context where it is said that there is a bid to dismantle over 200 gangs operating in Jamaica, the decision has been taken to remove automatic security from the JCF to these judges, most of whom are female, most of whom travel long hours to and from work — quite a remarkable decision there,” the chief justice, sarcasm in his tone.

He further criticised the discretion given to the permanent secretary in the Ministry of National Security in the matter.

“The policy, as I understand it, is that security is provided or not for parish court judges dependent upon a designation by the permanent secretary in the Ministry of National Security, and that in turn will, I suppose, be influenced by an analysis done by the JCF. But the document, as outlined, does not say that if the JCF recommends security the permanent secretary has to accept it. It doesn’t say that. The permanent secretary has a discretion, regardless of what the JCF recommends,” the chief justice pointed out.

Turning to the recommendation to use private security as close protection officers (CPOs), Sykes said it had the potential to undermine the independence of the judiciary.

“Security companies are, from time to time, litigants in the courts. One of the most frequent issues of litigation is whether the particular security officer is an independent contractor or an employee, and we think that this thinking has the potential to undermine the independence of the judiciary, the integrity of the process,” he stated.

“If security services are contracted from company A, and there is litigation involving company A, which might not necessarily be listed as company A, but somebody connected to company A in another part of the island, a decision is made and was in favour of the company, it is not unreasonable for persons to seek to make the link between using private security companies and the decision that the judge has made,” he reasoned further.

“So, we think that, as far as the judges of the parish court are concerned, we should be given automatic security from the JCF. The thinking also is that if I have private security they can be made special district constables, and even though the policy doesn’t say so, the obvious rationale is powers of arrest. Because if you have private security persons now, they do not have the powers of arrest like any other citizen and can only act if the crime is being committed in their presence and they observe it, whereas the police officer can act upon reasonable suspicion,” he argued.

Sykes also said that in instances when judges leave court — “and some of the courts are in remote locations, some are in not so safe locations, such as the parish court in Spanish Town” — if there are traffic management issues no private citizen can get out of their vehicle and lawfully stop traffic. Only police officers have that authority.

“What recourse will the private security person have in the event of distress [and] they do not have the resources of the JCF to call on? What is going to be the situation then?” he asked.

Expressing hope that nothing untoward happens in those situations, he said, “We think that that policy is ill-conceived and really should be revised as far as the judges of the parish court are concerned.”

He said, while there had been dialogue alerting judicial officers to the fact that there was a difficulty in filling out the need for CPOs, there had been no discussions to sift through the implications of pulling the police bodyguards.

National Security Minister Dr Horace Chang, in announcing the plan in Parliament on Wednesday, had said an internal assessment by the JCF in 2020 showed that the Protective Services Division ranked among the largest police divisions with a complement of 515 police personnel.

He said the deployment of trained police officers to carry out close-protection support for public officials had resulted in the underutilisation of law enforcers who are trained to fight crime.