Klao Bell, Staff Reporter
FEWER than 30 per cent of all cases sent to the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) over the last five years have been investigated.
Crippled by insufficient staff and several internal re-organisation, the office has been unable to fulfil demands made of it since 1996.
Of the 4,730 cases sent to the two Divisions between 1996 and 2000, only 1,387 of them have been investigated and completed. Last year, 348 of the 956 files were investigated and completed. The year before, 182 out of 885 were investigated.
Deputy Superintendent Miguel Wynter, who took over from Senior Superintendent Perry Edwards as head of OPR in late September, told The Sunday Gleaner that the department was acutely short staffed.
"If you look at the number of reports that come in, and those that are dealt with, it shows that we need more people," DSP Wynter said.
An arm of the Jamaica Constabulary Force, the OPR includes the Internal Affairs and the Complaints Divisions. The mandate of the Internal Affairs Division is to investigate "all allegations of corruption as well as rumours pointing to corrupt behaviours involving members of the force." Corrupt behaviours include death or escape of prisoners in police custody and loss of a service revolver.
The Complaints Division is supposed to investigate complaints of misconduct made by members of the public about any member of the police force, irrespective of rank.
But most of those cases are not investigated and hundreds are being rolled over, untouched, every year.
Internal Affairs has a staff of 17 investigators while Complaints has 20. And still, the full complement is rarely in place, as officers go off on leave.
DSP Wynter said other challenges faced by the Office are the failure of members of the public to follow through with complaints. He pointed out too that time is wasted investigating reports which turn up to be false.
"Somebody comes in, lodges a complaint then disappears, the files are then held up because we can't contact the person. At the same time, a number of the complaints made against officers, turn out to be false," DSP Wynter said.
The process by which files are handled is also lengthy, as files from OPR are sent to the Office of the Commissioner of Police, who sends them to the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) if criminal activity is detected.
Over the five-year period 621 files were sent to the DPP who ruled on 408. Of those files, 175 were found to warrant criminal prosecutions, but only seven police officers were convicted. The others received dismissals from the force or no order rulings.
