AS at June 10, we had a reported 44 per cent reduction in the number of murders for year 2025 as compared to 2024. These results are spectacular and are a welcome relief from what obtained previously when we saw citizens and communities under siege and many murders being committed throughout the country.

The major investments in national security — including increased numbers of policemen and policewomen, increased mobility and communications and other technologies — are bearing some fruit. But, do these improvements by themselves account for the major reduction in murders?

A major factor is the offensive action and proactive approach taken by a motivated police force. This approach takes the fight to the criminals who, for the time being, are in retreat. This has led to increased confrontations between the police and criminal suspects, or people they classify as violence producers. A persistent and troubling feature of these confrontations is the standard nature of the police reporting and the results — the person(s) of interest is/are dead and gun(s) recovered.

In military conflicts, where the combatants are using heavy weapons, the casualties invariably comprise the dead and wounded. How come? What is it that drives different outcomes in police operations? We are left to speculate, and the Independent Commission of Investigations (Indecom) is providing very few answers.

Indecom is denied the benefit of hearing and recording evidence from the deceased or independent witnesses. Indecom is similarly denied the benefit of video footage that could be obtained from body-worn cameras, and yet we expect it to investigate thoroughly and completely and come to just conclusions.

Without Indecom being able to do its job properly and to pronounce on each case it investigates, we are left to speculate as to whether the police have acted in accordance with their own Human Rights and Use of Force Policy. We want to believe the police’s account of every incident, but history, the circumstances, common sense and experience tell us that to do so would be foolish.

So where is this much-vaunted commitment to transparency and accountability? Or do these principles not apply to the police’s planned operations during which they move aggressively against wanted persons? Calls from Indecom, human rights groups, and others for the use of body-worn cameras in planned operations have brought some very interesting and creative responses. We are told that they are working on this specially designed ‘superior system’ with all the ‘bells and whistles’ etc, and it will take time to complete and implement. In the meantime, we should chill, sit on our backsides, and wait until they are fit and ready. So, can we not even have an interim arrangement which, though not perfect, will give Indecom an adequate level of capability to allow it to do its work?

Should we hold our breath?

The ‘resistance’ to the acquisition and use of body-worn cameras in these planned operations betrays a sinister purpose. The longer we take to close this transparency and accountability gap is the longer the runway we give the police to ‘run with it’, so delay, delay, delay. Let us see how far down the runway we can get before our international partners and other groups become antsy and start demanding answers. This has happened before.

This approach where we take the view that the end justifies the means will no doubt sit well with many Jamaicans who have long endured the effects of rampant criminality, particularly murders. But we have to carefully determine what we want. Is it a nation governed by laws, rules, and regulations that affect all equally, or is it acceptable to break our own laws to enforce laws and protect our people?

To the JCF: Never in your history have you had the number of officers that you now do. Never in your history have you been so well-resourced with the tools of your trade, with promises of more to come. Never before in your history have you had so many well-educated and highly trained gazetted officers and rank and file.

You do not have to resort to any form of quick fixes, howsoever popular and seemingly effective, if it violates the laws you are sworn to uphold.

Play by the rules. Criminals do not, and that is what makes them criminals. If you play outside the rules it makes you a criminal also. Remember, those who glorify and worship you today will be amongst the first to abandon you to save their skins when things go wrong.

I once remarked to Wilmot “Mutty” Perkins on his talk show; “There is no point killing off all the gunmen whilst maintaining the factories that are producing them.” Mutty used this quote frequently on subsequent shows.

The recent success of our security forces in drastically reducing murders is welcomed and celebrated by many Jamaicans. As we celebrate, however, we must be mindful that we may be merely driving criminality deeper underground and into greater sophistication. Any policing strategy that employs a tactic of elimination will force the criminal elements to lie dormant for a period, and then? The answer to this should be the focus of the minds of our well-educated and highly trained security personnel.

Security forces successes alone will not reduce criminal activities to acceptable and sustainable levels. The only sure way is to remove the conditions which stimulated criminality in the first place. Our collective aim should be to afford protection against criminal elements while at the same time raising the standard of living, improving health and education facilities, engendering faith in a democratically elected Government by demonstrating justice and fair play and generally by winning the support of the people. The cause, not just the effect, of the problem must be removed. This requires leadership, at all levels.

Hardley Lewin is a former chief of defence staff and police commissioner.