On Tuesday, as if to commemorate the first anniversary of its receipt of $52 million from the European Union (EU) to fund human rights programmes, Jamaicans For Justice (JFJ) staged a demonstration in Half-Way-Tree, St Andrew, against alleged extrajudicial killings by police.

No doubt, the event planners at the JFJ would have patted themselves on the back for coming up with the idea of a protest demonstration. But after the handful of people who showed up in Half-Way-Tree, they might well be ruing the decision.

JFJ completely misread the desperation of Jamaicans who have been existing on an island awash with blood for decades on end and are now seeing the beginnings of a change they’ve yearned for in the falling number of murders and other major crimes.

“… So far this year — January 1 to April 27 — there have been 227 murders. This represents 132 fewer lives lost, or a 37 per cent reduction compared to the corresponding period in 2024. Major crimes are down by 19 per cent over the same period,” Security Minister Dr Horace Chang told Parliament on Tuesday.

Ordinarily, this should have been an occasion for celebration, not just by the Government for making inroads against marauding gunmen but by the Jamaican people who suffered long and hard, paying with their lives and livelihoods and, of course, their hard-earned taxes.

JFJ may demonstrate in the cause of police accountability, but it must take care that its message resonates with the Jamaican people, who are not supporting any unproved unlawful police killings but just want a break from heartless gunmen.

We give the last word to Ms Gillian Scott who posted the following lightly edited gem on her Facebook page:

“JFJ is an important entity… Many excesses have been turned back as a result of their work. But this is where they lost me and, in my view, lost the narrative:

“They first framed their protest as too many killed in shoot-outs by the police. They compared police killings here with police killings in the USA, looking at the sheer numbers without looking at murders per capita of both countries. I was stunned. Jamaica has been in civil war for decades. An uptick in police activity was bound to generate more casualties. What did they expect?

“Indecom is still in place investigating… The benchmark cannot be number of police killings. It must hinge on the output of Indecom investigations and the numbers of murder per capita. When many pointed out to them (JFJ) that they should have had a different approach that framed their intervention as advocacy for body-worn cameras (BWC), they slightly shifted the narrative. By then they lost the momentum.

“The police indeed need to wear the BWCs… But to take a stance against the police in a time of historic successes against crime, to a crime-weary nation, was foolhardy. This did not warrant a protest. It warranted nuanced high-level advocacy for body-worn cameras, while offering guarded congratulations for the decrease in the crime rate.

“… [T]hey have come out on the wrong side of history… as out of touch, uptown pencil pushers who do not care about the lived realities of many in volatile communities…

“I wore blue today in solidarity with the police, but my pants were black (for JFJ) as a reminder that we must do things the right way… for the sake of the integrity and success of JCF investigations.”