Jamaican ministers praise their country’s ZOSO model after T&T bill collapses

Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ke­[email protected]

PANA­MA CITY—Ja­maica’s Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs and For­eign Trade, Kam­i­na John­son Smith, con­tin­ues to rec­om­mend her coun­try’s Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOs) as a key part of a crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion failed to pass in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Sen­ate.

John­son Smith spoke with Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day night on the pe­riph­eries of CAF’s In­ter­na­tion­al Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum in Pana­ma City, hours af­ter sen­a­tors re­ject­ed amend­ments to the ZOSO bill, de­spite the Gov­ern­ment’s ef­fort to pass the leg­is­la­tion be­fore the State of Emer­gency ends on Jan­u­ary 31.

“I didn’t know that,” John­son Smith said, look­ing vis­i­bly sur­prised when in­formed of the bill’s fail­ure. “The ZOSOs have been a crit­i­cal part of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ar­chi­tec­ture and part of the ecosys­tem that we have used to de­liv­er the mul­ti-pronged ap­proach that has led to the mas­sive re­duc­tions that we are now ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in homi­cide.”

She stressed, how­ev­er, that the ini­tia­tive was not a cure-all.

“There’s been no sil­ver bul­let, but the ZOSO has been a crit­i­cal part of the tool­box,” she said.

Un­der Ja­maica’s frame­work, ZOSOs com­bine in­ten­si­fied polic­ing with so­cial in­ter­ven­tion, tar­get­ing com­mu­ni­ties iden­ti­fied as pro­duc­ing a dis­pro­por­tion­ate share of vi­o­lent crime.

“It com­bines so­cial ac­tion with hard polic­ing,” John­son Smith said. “You are bring­ing in your agen­cies of so­cial change. You are en­sur­ing that dis­en­fran­chised youth have op­por­tu­ni­ties and train­ing. You are en­sur­ing bet­ter garbage col­lec­tion so there is com­mu­ni­ty pride, to­geth­er with the hard polic­ing.”

She said Ja­maica iden­ti­fied rough­ly 20 com­mu­ni­ties re­spon­si­ble for about 80 per cent of vi­o­lent crime and fo­cused re­sources ac­cord­ing­ly. In some ZOSO com­mu­ni­ties, she said, there were ze­ro or one mur­ders over one- or two-year pe­ri­ods af­ter des­ig­na­tion.

The dis­cus­sion comes amid height­ened con­cern about po­lice use of lethal force across the re­gion. In Ja­maica, po­lice fa­tal­ly shot more than 300 peo­ple last year, ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cial fig­ures. Ja­maican au­thor­i­ties have main­tained that none of those killings oc­curred with­in ZOSO com­mu­ni­ties.

In Trinidad and To­ba­go, pub­lic out­rage has in­ten­si­fied fol­low­ing the re­lease of CCTV footage show­ing 31-year-old Joshua Sama­roo ap­pear­ing to sur­ren­der be­fore po­lice opened fire, killing him and crit­i­cal­ly in­jur­ing his com­mon-law wife, Ka­ia Sealy, 28.

Asked how Ja­maica ad­dressed con­cerns about po­lice bru­tal­i­ty with­in ZOSOs, John­son Smith point­ed to re­form of the po­lice ser­vice, which Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness stressed as a pil­lar in the fight against crime.

“Train­ing,” she said. “In­ten­sive hu­man rights train­ing. Hu­man rights has be­come a core cur­ricu­lum el­e­ment in po­lice train­ing now. Once you’re re­cruit­ed, this is part of what you learn as a po­lice­man.”

She said the Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter had been in­sis­tent on trans­form­ing the force to en­sure of­fi­cers were bet­ter trained and more dis­ci­plined in their in­ter­ac­tions with cit­i­zens.

John­son Smith al­so high­light­ed the ac­count­abil­i­ty mech­a­nisms built in­to Ja­maica’s leg­is­la­tion.

“There was a mech­a­nism to re­port to Par­lia­ment,” she said. “Every 90 days, the Gov­ern­ment re­port­ed on what was hap­pen­ing in each ZOSO and sought its ex­ten­sion, so there was a lev­el of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty that had nev­er ex­ist­ed be­fore.”

Those safe­guards fea­tured promi­nent­ly among amend­ments pro­posed to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s bill. Dur­ing the com­mit­tee stage in the Sen­ate, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie said there was in­suf­fi­cient time to ful­ly con­sid­er near­ly 50 amend­ments put for­ward by in­de­pen­dent and op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors.

Of­fi­cials in­volved in draft­ing Ja­maica’s ZOSO leg­is­la­tion, who spoke with Guardian Me­dia but were not au­tho­rised to com­ment pub­licly, said those amend­ments were cen­tral to the mod­el’s suc­cess. They in­clud­ed sun­set claus­es, manda­to­ry re­port­ing to Par­lia­ment, and there was no pro­vi­sion to al­low the Prime Min­is­ter to uni­lat­er­al­ly des­ig­nate a zone.

Un­der Ja­maica’s frame­work, mem­bers of Par­lia­ment and com­mu­ni­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tives had to re­quest ZOSO sta­tus, and com­mu­ni­ties were re­quired to meet spe­cif­ic cri­te­ria be­fore des­ig­na­tion.

Those of­fi­cials said Ja­maica’s leg­is­la­tion, though draft­ed quick­ly, took months to pass as the Gov­ern­ment worked to se­cure pub­lic and par­lia­men­tary sup­port, as op­posed to T&T’s bill, which the Gov­ern­ment sought to pass dur­ing a short pe­ri­od be­fore the State of Emer­gency ex­pires on Jan­u­ary 31.

Ja­maica’s Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Pub­lic Ser­vice and MP for St An­drew East­ern, Fay­val Williams, said she had seen the im­pact of ZOSOs first­hand in her con­stituen­cy.

“Once you said the name of that area, the first thing that came to peo­ple’s minds was mur­der,” Williams said. “Now, to­tal change, to­tal trans­for­ma­tion. They have come to know and be­lieve that peace can be long-last­ing.”