THE Office of the Public Defender (OPD) and the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) have resolved their misgivings regarding the provision of information about detainees during a state of public emergency (SOE).

The OPD had accused the police of stonewalling and giving an “aura of unwelcomeness” whenever it requested information about SOE detentions and visited lock-ups.

Both parties hashed out their differences during a meeting of Parliament’s internal and external affairs (IEA) committee on Tuesday, at which Deputy Public Defender Herbert McKenzie presented a scathing report, accusing the JCF of not being forthcoming about detainees’ data which has not been supplied since 2018. The police have since committed to providing the necessary information, within the ambit of the law.

The report was in response to the IEA committee’s request for the OPD to provide information on detentions under the SOEs, with the deputy public defender stating that in the document that “the information the IEA committee now seeks is securely embedded in the bosom of the JCF and/or the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF)”.

The OPD said that during the SOEs in 2018, it had kept track of detainees and their information such as the duration of detention, age, gender, reason given for detention, etc. Additionally, the office took note of the condition of places of detention, including provision of meals and other items needed by people detained.

Further, in the report, McKenzie said that following the OPD’s presentation to the IEA committee on the 2018 SOEs, the JCF took issue with the figures presented.

“In fact, following that presentation, the JCF stated publicly that the information supplied by the public defender “was meant to demean the police”. This position, articulated by the St James Division, was published in the media and there was no distancing of the JCF high command from that sentiment. In fact, the JCF Legal Affairs Division also took issue with the figures presented by the public defender,” he said.

The report added that requests to some police divisions by the OPD for information on detainees during subsequent SOEs, while not outrightly rejected, have yielded information which are conclusions by the police, rather than raw data as was provided in the 2018 SOEs. “The JCF’s conclusions do not help the public defender. The public defender requires the raw data from which the OPD can do its own analyses,” the report said.

“The OPD has discerned the development as a subtle reluctance on the part of the JCF to provide the public defender with information relating to detentions in the SOEs. An example was the request for information on five persons who were taken into custody and being held at the Central Police Station in November 2021. This was during the SOEs declared on the 14th November, 2021. Kingston Central was one of seven police divisions in which SOEs were declared on that particular occasion,” the deputy public defender said in the report.

This request, he said, led to back and forth via letters between the OPD and the police, who questioned the public defender’s jurisdiction to request information on the detainees.

“There followed a series of letters between the OPD and the JCF Legal Affairs Division. In the end, the information requested of the JCF by the public defender was never supplied,” he said.

In response, Commissioner of Police Major General Antony Anderson said he has looked at the report and made note of the back-and-forth exchanges.

“But the point is, if the public defender needs information, we can give it to the Public Defender’s Office. We will do that. I commit to doing that,” he said, adding that there have not been many SOEs since 2018.

“There have been about four or five since then, in different areas, but if you need information on those, I commit to give you that data,” he said.

Committee member Donovan Williams sought clarity as to whether there is any legal impediment to providing information on SOE detainees.

Public Defender Carolyn Reid-Cameron responded: “Where we sit, we do have the jurisdiction to seek this sort of information. In fact, we actually do have some powers under the Office of the Public Defender Act, through the use of summonses, etcetera, to demand this kind of information.”

“I do believe though that after today we can anticipate that going forward we would have a much smoother ride with the intervention of the commissioner of police,” said Reid-Cameron.

Said the police commissioner: “I believe we have a new public defender; we should have a meeting. We can have that, and I believe that out of it we can resolve all of this,” he said.