Mark Wignall | Stone-cold killers

Most or just all of us saw that video of the police shooting in Granville, Jamaica, this past weekend, which resulted in the horrible death of a woman.

To say the least, it was chilling. Excessively so. The JCF member executed the woman. To be precise, he murdered her.  I went on the road that day to speak to various people at street level. Only one person agreed with what the policeman did. It surprised me that it was a woman who sided with the cop. 

The JCF “excuse” that she was attempting to flee or drive over the JCF member is disingenuous and false. How could there be any truth to that narrative?  

But what happened after she was shot was equally horrifying.  Slowly dying, she was treated like a bag of flour and thrown into the back of the JCF vehicle, which was full of items, including spare tires. She could not fit.  The JCF personnel had to force the tailgate to close.  The cruelty shown by the JCF personnel is unspeakable.  

Why was she not put in the cabin and the JCF personnel hop in the back? What I saw was horrible, unbelievable, cruel, wicked, and unacceptable.   

Let me go back a little in time. Not too far back to bring excess pressure to you. If this upsets you, I will understand. 

Surely, Jamaica’s top cop must be tired by now. The commissioner keeps telling the public that the JCF is now professional, ethical, and well run.  Really? That is just not so. Not even near.

There was nothing professional or proper about the actions by the JCF personnel in Granville on that day.    The Granville shooting closes the case on the urgent need for body-worn cameras for the JCF during all operations.  All operations.  To use Minister Chang’s words, “It’s crazy” not to have bodyworn cameras for all JCF operations.     

Some JCF personnel are stone-cold killers, and they will prey upon their fellow Jamaicans and slaughter them. 

I do not need anyone to give me second-hand info about the JCF. I was first physically abused by a JCF member when I was 15 and headed home on the way from a party at 3 a.m. My home was less than half a mile away.

I was 39 the second time I was violently slapped across the face by a cop and my spectacles broken. By that time, I knew the moves to make to eventually separate him from his job.

Increasingly, some people at street level are seeing the JLP administration and saying that the love they once had for it has slipped away. ‘Holness can come a road now. Wi no like dem nuh more.’

FORENSIC EXPERT SAYS

The views of a forensic expert made the rounds last week. It went like this.

“As the vehicle attempts to navigate away, an officer deliberately manoeuvres his body directly into its path. In forensic pathology and accident reconstruction, this special manoeuvre is classified as the intentional manufacturing of a deadly threat. This is a calculated tactical fraud. Standard police doctrine dictates that you do not step in front of a moving vehicle to stop it, you step away to preserve life and maintain a tactical advantage.

“Stepping into the vehicle’s line of travel is a deliberate act of provocation designed to engineer a fraudulent legal defence of fearing for one’s life to justify deploying deadly force. This is a premeditated staging of necessity to commit murder. 

“The discharge of the firearm into the cabin of that vehicle cannot be characterised under any legal framework as a justifiable action. The weapon was fired at point-blank range into an enclosed cabin containing a trapped target. The driver posed no immediate asymmetrical threat of deadly force to the perimeter that was not actively manufactured by the officer's own positioning. 

“When a trained state actor intentionally creates a hazard, refuses all de-escalation protocols, blocks avenues of escapes and deploys lethal force directly into an enclosed vehicle cabin, the forensic conclusion is singular, definitive and absolute. Murder. 

“The handling of the victim immediately following the shooting represents a grotesque, systemic breach of medical, legal and humanitarian protocols. It is the brazen, wanton signature of an unchecked security force operating with total contempt for human life and legal accountability. 

“State actors have no legal authority to pronounce death at a scene. Yet the victim was dragged like dead weight from the driver’s side, hoisted into the air, and thrown into the bed of a pickup truck. Forcing a human being’s body into a metal cargo bed and violently slamming the tailgate against her torso in full view of civilian women and children constitutes an act of state terror.

“The video does not require interpretation; it requires an immediate indictment. It stands as an undeniable, objective recording of murder in plain sight. The flagrant disregard for forensic integrity, the casual dumping of human bodies into cargo beds, and the total absence of operational restraint are the direct structural results of political rhetoric. 

“When the executive leadership of a nation publicly proclaims that citizens will meet their maker, street-level forces translate that directive into summary executions, Jamaica has officially collapsed into a police state directed by an authoritarian regime where the uniform is utilised as licence to slaughter. 

“The officer who fired the fatal shot along with every accomplice who aided in the immediate contamination of the vehicle and the desecration of the victim’s body must be immediately arrested and charged with murder.”

Mark Wignall is a political and public affairs analyst. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com.