Richard
Burton

Over the past two decades, Jamaican authorities have sought to fight the country’s crime rate with a tough approach which has resulted in more than 3,000 killings by the police since 2000. In 2015, 8% of all murders committed across Jamaica were at the hands of law enforcement officials.

The Jamaican authorities claim they are taking steps to tackle this crisis. But, despite a steep reduction in cases of killings by the police over the last three years, most of the cases have not yet reached the courts and remain in impunity. Despite overwhelming evidence of police involvement in the crimes, only a handful of officers have been convicted of murder in the last two decades.

Some Jamaican police harass and intimidate relatives of those killed to prevent them from seeking justice, and often terrifying them into silence. In dozens of cases, police employ illegal tactics to instill fear and prevent justice from taking its course. Police officers have raided relatives’ homes to stop them from showing up at court hearings, harassed witnesses to prevent them from testifying and intimidated those who managed to be heard inside the court room.In some cases, police officers have even appeared at the victims’ funerals, in a bid aimed at intimidating the surviving relatives and deterring them from pursuing justice.