标签： Jamaica

A recent lethal airstrike carried out by the United States military against a suspected drug-trafficking vessel has pushed the cumulative death toll from Washington’s year-long anti-“narco-terrorist” campaign across Latin America to at least 182, according to official statements and independent counting. The strike, which took place on Friday, left two people dead aboard the targeted boat, US Southern Command — the military body overseeing all American operations in the Latin American and Caribbean region — confirmed in a public post on the social platform X. In its announcement, the command echoed the standardized language it has used to justify dozens of similar lethal operations launched since the campaign launched in September last year, claiming intelligence assessments verified the vessel was traveling along well-documented smuggling corridors in the Eastern Pacific and actively engaged in drug-trafficking activities. According to a tally compiled by Agence France-Presse, this strike marked at least the seventh such lethal operation carried out by US forces in April alone. Despite repeated claims that targeted vessels are linked to drug smuggling networks categorized as terrorist organizations by the US government, the Trump administration has yet to release conclusive, public evidence to back up these assertions. The lack of transparent proof has sparked fierce debate over the legal standing of the cross-border campaign. International legal scholars and global human rights organizations have raised sharp criticism, arguing that most of these strikes qualify as extrajudicial killings. Many of those killed, they contend, were unarmed civilians who did not pose any immediate, active threat to US national security, raising serious questions about the moral and legal legitimacy of the ongoing campaign.

KINGSTON, Jamaica — Two of Jamaica’s leading financial regulatory and law enforcement agencies have cemented a new strategic alliance to tackle pervasive illicit financial activity across the island. The Financial Investigations Division (FID) and the Revenue Protection Department (RPD) have officially signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that establishes a formal structure for deepened collaboration against a range of threats, including money laundering, terrorist financing, revenue fraud, and other systemic financial crimes.

Dennis Chung, Chief Technical Director of the FID, emphasized that the agreement builds on a already productive working relationship between the two agencies, while formalizing critical processes that will amplify their collective impact. Under the new framework, clear protocols for cross-agency information sharing, case referrals, and coordinated enforcement actions are now in place. These structured arrangements, Chung explained, will drastically boost both bodies’ capacity to identify, probe, and disrupt illegal financial activities that erode government revenue and undermine the stability and integrity of Jamaica’s entire financial system. He noted that this kind of targeted strategic partnership is a foundational requirement for effective national regulatory enforcement and crime mitigation.

Cranston Morgan, who serves as both Chief Technical Director of the RPD and Commissioner of Revenue Protection, echoed Chung’s optimism, highlighting that the alliance will strengthen both agencies’ ability to rapidly respond to financial misconduct and guard the broader public interest.

Morgan framed the MoU as another measurable milestone in the ongoing effort to tighten inter-agency cooperation. It creates a reliable foundation for timely information exchanges, more cohesive operational coordination, and more strategic utilization of each agency’s unique institutional expertise when addressing revenue offenses and linked financial crimes. He emphasized that the partnership delivers mutual benefits for both bodies, while also advancing the Jamaican government’s wider national goals: protecting public funds and bolstering domestic and international confidence in Jamaica’s financial regulatory ecosystem.

At its core, the MoU outlines a formal legal framework for consultation, collaborative action, and lawful information sharing that aligns with both agencies’ statutory mandates. Beyond information sharing, the agreement is designed to strengthen intelligence gathering, streamline cross-agency coordination, and enable more effective criminal and civil investigations as well as enforcement outcomes.

The agreement details clear reciprocal obligations for both agencies. The FID will supply the RPD with raw data and supporting materials required for intelligence development and ongoing investigations, alongside advance notification of any upcoming criminal probes that involve individuals or entities of interest to the RPD. It will also share requested statistical data to support RPD work.

In exchange, the RPD will provide the FID with its own relevant data and materials to aid the FID’s intelligence and investigation activities. This includes alerts of suspected revenue crimes and other financial offenses involving parties the FID is tracking, plus relevant statistical data, specialized technical assistance, and compliance data that can support the FID’s investigation and prosecution of financial crimes.

Additional provisions of the MoU cover expanded collaborative activities: case referrals between agencies, joint enforcement operations, parallel criminal investigations, cross-training for personnel from both bodies, and coordinated public outreach initiatives. These outreach efforts are designed to educate key stakeholders on the full range of risks linked to corruption, violations of revenue law, money laundering, and terrorist financing. The agreement also formalizes governance protocols to ensure all shared information is handled securely, protected from unauthorized access, and used only for appropriate, legally permitted purposes.

As Jamaica’s legislative committee weighs proposed changes to expand the national Child Diversion Programme into school disciplinary spaces, Education Minister Dr. Dana Morris Dixon has drawn a critical line, urging policymakers to preserve the separation between criminal offenses and school-based behavioral misconduct. She warned that ill-considered expansion of the diversion program could erode the foundational function of the country’s existing child protection infrastructure.

Speaking during Thursday’s sitting of the Joint Select Committee tasked with reviewing the Child Diversion Act, Morris Dixon acknowledged that persistent disruptive behavior in Jamaican schools demands more robust, targeted intervention. However, she pushed back against framing every campus incident through the lens of the criminal justice system.

Her comments were delivered in direct response to proposals put forward by University of the Commonwealth Caribbean student Daniel Barnes, who had called on the committee to incorporate common school disciplinary issues—including physical fights, persistent bullying, and petty theft—into the Child Diversion Programme. The push for reform stems from growing public anxiety over rising rates of youth violence across Jamaican educational institutions.

Barnes, who serves on a school disciplinary committee, told the panel that current pathways for addressing escalating misconduct are fragmented and ineffective. He noted that even when schools refer students with persistent behavioral issues to existing agencies such as the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA) and restorative justice practitioners, interventions often fail to drive meaningful long-term behavior change. To address this gap, he put forward a three-tiered framework designed to intervene early, before minor misconduct escalates into criminal activity or severe violent harm.

Morris Dixon countered that welfare-focused interventions for at-risk students are already well-established under Jamaica’s Child Care and Protection Act (CCPA), delivered primarily through the CPFSA, which maintains direct ongoing partnerships with schools and families across the island. “In the situations that have come up in recent times, the CPFSA has been involved with the schools. They have taken the children, they have visited the families, visited the homes, done the psychological support, given that kind of support, and given lots of other support to the children, very similar to what happens in the Child Diversion Programme,” the minister explained. “There’s just a difference between children who come into conflict with the law and those who are seen to be somewhat uncontrollable or having issues.”

While the two systems use similar supportive approaches, Morris Dixon stressed that the distinction between them is fundamental and must not be eliminated. She urged committee members to conduct a full mapping of all existing youth support frameworks operating in Jamaican schools before moving forward with any legislative amendments.

“It’s important that we understand the whole lay of the land, which is something I have been saying, so that we understand where child diversion starts and ends, where CCPA starts and ends, and where there are any gaps, in terms of some of the approaches and techniques, and then when we find the gaps, we figure out which legislation is appropriate to do it under,” she added.

The minister also suggested that many of the perceived gaps in addressing school misconduct stem from administrative shortcomings rather than gaps in legislation, warning against creating duplicative systems that waste resources and confuse institutional roles. Her intervention has reframed the committee’s debate, shifting focus from sweeping expansion to targeted gap-fixing that preserves the core purposes of both the child protection and criminal diversion frameworks.

Jamaica’s Minister of National Security and Peace, Deputy Prime Minister Dr. Horace Chang, has drawn a firm line in the ongoing debate over police body camera use, stating unequivocally that officers will not be required to wear the devices during high-risk operations targeting armed criminals. He has publicly dismissed growing demands from civil society advocates for universal body camera use as an ill-conceived and dangerous proposal that puts law enforcement lives at unnecessary risk.

The debate has intensified in recent months amid a sharp uptick in fatal police shootings across Jamaica, with civil society group Jamaicans For Justice leading repeated calls for mandatory camera deployment during all planned police operations to increase accountability. Chang, who has been locked in public disagreement with the advocacy group over the policy, laid out his full position during Wednesday’s weekly post-Cabinet press briefing at Jamaica House, leaving no ambiguity about his stance.

“This thing that you must wear a camera when you going to look for a man who has a M16 that’s firing 60 rounds per second is a crazy idea,” Chang stated during the briefing. He walked through the practical realities of high-stakes counter-gunman operations, explaining that when gunfire breaks out, officers prioritize taking cover before returning fire, and mandatory body cameras would create avoidable additional hazards. For early morning planned raids targeting dangerous wanted suspects, Chang said cameras are simply off the table.

Noting that fugitive armed criminals often move more quickly than responding officers, Chang emphasized that stealth and surprise are critical to successful operations. “Cameras make them a target,” he explained, adding that officers entering these high-risk scenarios already face extreme danger, and any requirement that compromises their safety cannot be implemented. Unlike routine public interactions, these covert operations cannot afford elements that reveal officers’ positions or identities before they can engage suspects, he argued.

Contrary to claims that the government opposes body camera use entirely, Chang clarified that the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) already has access to body-worn cameras, with 1,000 additional units on order to expand the program, and all officers receive training on how to use the devices. Deployment decisions, he reiterated, rest solely with Commissioner of Police Dr. Kevin Blake, a position he first laid out during his sectoral debate address to Parliament Tuesday. Civil society groups have no authority to dictate how police equipment is deployed in the field, he added.

Chang pointed out that body cameras are already in regular use for appropriate types of operations across Jamaica. For example, at least one officer involved in the national coordinated road check initiative — a program designed to disrupt gang activity and recover illegal firearms — wears a camera during these interactions. This use case aligns with how body cameras are deployed in the United States, where the technology was first adopted broadly to address racial profiling in routine traffic stops and public interactions, not for high-risk tactical SWAT operations. That model is comparable to the work of the JCF’s Public Safety and Traffic Enforcement Branch, which already uses cameras when engaging with the public, he noted.

Currently, most local body camera use is for routine public-facing work: road checks and crowd management at entertainment events. Chang highlighted tangible public safety benefits from this existing deployment: since cameras were introduced for traffic stops, confrontations between police and taxi operators have dropped dramatically. “When last have you seen a video — because they used to go viral — of a policeman and a taximan fighting, or a policeman has to beat up a taximan? They don’t, because when the taximan or any driver sees a policeman with a camera and he stops a car, they behave themselves,” he said.

The minister pushed back against what he described as a harmful colonial-era legacy of widespread public assumption that Jamaican authorities and elected officials are inherently corrupt. He argued that repeated calls for universal body camera use for all operations reinforces this false narrative, which he called an unfair misrepresentation of the JCF. “It assumes that those who have authority are corrupt, so the idea that the police is a corrupt body out there to extort people is a wrong legacy. It’s incorrect and I cannot support anything that seeks to reinforce that and that’s what the call for cameras to be used all the time does,” Chang said.

He emphasized that while the government welcomes constructive criticism of law enforcement policy, it is long past time for the public to trust Jamaican police professionals and respect their expertise in operational planning. Acknowledging that the 14,000-strong JCF is not a perfect institution, and that a small number of officers have engaged in criminal misconduct, Chang noted that official data backs up the claim that bad actors are a tiny minority. Statistics from the Independent Commission of Investigations (Indecom), Jamaica’s police oversight body, show that only 3.4 per cent of police officers charged with offenses in recent years have been convicted.

Chang closed by repeating his call for civil society organizations to allow established oversight processes to run their course before issuing public statements or passing judgement on police operations. He said Indecom, as the independent investigative body, should be allowed to complete its work and release its findings before any public conclusions are drawn about officer conduct.