Editorial | Body-worn cameras a priority

Like the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM), we too are baffled by the continued failure of the Jamaica Constabulary Force to prioritise the use of body-worn cameras (BWC) by its officers who go on planned operations, or those with greatest potential for the use of deadly force.

The position, on its face, beggars logic and good sense. For it weakens public confidence in the truthfulness of statements by the police about deadly encounters with citizens, and creates the basis for the frustration so plaintively expressed by INDECOM in its statement this week about the latest wave of police killings – 11 in four days, from April 3 to 6, inclusive.

That brought police killings for the year to 89, two more than for the corresponding period in 2025. If this trajectory is maintained, police killings will surpass the 310 recorded last year, which was 64 per cent higher than the previous year and the most in the decade-and-a-half since INDECOM’s establishment.

INDECOM, an independent agency, mandatorily investigates all police shootings and complaints of abuse against all branches of the security forces. It was established in the midst of widespread public disaffection with the behaviour of the constabulary, including claims of extrajudicial killings, and a view that the police were no good at investigating themselves.

In the years after INDECOM’s creation, and its aggressive investigation of allegations of abuse, police homicides fell significantly, but recently has been on the rise again, as murders overall have fallen.

UPWARD TRAJECTORY

In 2013, for instance, 253 citizens were killed by the police. This declined to a low of 86 in 2019, but since then has been on an upward trajectory: 102 in 2020; 118 in 2021; 122 in 2022; 142 in 2023; and 180 in 2025

Meanwhile, the 673 murders recorded in Jamaica in 2025 were a 30-year low, and 43 per cent fewer than the previous year’s figure, which itself was 22 per cent lower than in 2023. And so far this year, homicides are trending nearly 30 per cent lower than for the corresponding quarter in 2025.

Nonetheless, despite aggressive push-back by the government and the police, who insist that their killings are justifiable outcomes of encounters with dangerous criminals – INDECOM and human rights groups remain concerned at the level of fatal shootings by cops, basis of which are often disputed by citizens, and occasionally, the emergence of independent video images.

It is in that context that INDECOM has consistently insisted on urgency in the police’s full roll-out of body-worn cameras (a project that has been in training at least since 2012) and for their use by the police on special operations, which account for a disproportionate number of fatal shootings, relative to the overall police-citizens encounter. In 2024, for example, 40 per cent (76) of the police killings were from these pre-planned operations. This was an increase of 217 per cent on the previous year. In the first seven months of 2025, the number was 51 per cent, 97 of 190 killings.

In no police killing has images from body-worn cameras ever been available. Those that the police have are deployed to cops assigned to public safety duties in public spaces.

NOT CLEAR

It is not clear if any of the Easter weekend fatal shootings by the police were in planned operations, but INDECOM’s deputy director, Yanique Taylor-Wellington, said that development was “a matter of grave and escalating concern”, reflecting “an alarming trajectory in the use of lethal force”, which and underscored “the urgent need for transparency and accountability in policing operations”.

“I again stress the critical importance of the consistent and mandatory use of body-worn cameras, particularly during planned operations, potential high-risk engagements and patrols in vulnerable and volatile communities, as an essential safeguard in modern policing,” Ms Taylor-Wellington said in a statement. “Such measures not only facilitate objective and independent review, but also serve to protect both members of the public and law-enforcement officers alike.”

“Modern policing must not depend on citizen recordings or private CCTV footage as the primary method of reconstructing critical incidents, like those involving the loss of lives,” she added. “The responsibility for accurate, contemporaneous documentation must rest with the State.”

Ms Taylor-Wellington logic is indisputable, notwithstanding the police chief’s past declaration that the constabulary will not be dictated about how it deploys its resources. Commissioner Kevin Blake has implied that the use of body-worn cameras would be widened when additional kits that were on order were received. This must be accelerated.

In the meantime, the available BWCs must be prioritised for use in the circumstances highlighted by Ms Taylor-Wellington. And they must be turned on.

Meanwhile, the police must publish its regulations governing the use of BWCs, including the protocols for writing-up incident reports, the management and control of the data, who has access to the data and under what circumstances.