Policemen carry the casket bearing the body of police corporal Leslie Smith following a service at the Church of God in Bucknor, Clarendon on Sunday. Smith, who worked with the Clarendon police, was killed in a road accident on Highway 2000 in St Catherine last month.

LOCAL human rights group Jamaicans For Justice (JFJ) said information supplied by the police's Bureau of Special Investigations showed that 167 citizens were killed by the police last year, which, it said is the highest in 14 years. Another 110 citizens, JFJ said, were shot and injured by the police last year.

Commissioner of Police Lucius Thomas and the constabulary's director of communications Karl Angell both declined to comment on the group's figures, but said all issues relating to crime statistics for 2005 would be discussed at a press conference scheduled for January 31.
The year 2005 was also a record year for murders, when just under 1,700 people were slain by criminals.

In the meantime, the rights group has called for substantive efforts to be taken to reduce the number of fatal shootings by the police.

"Jamaicans For Justice is appalled at this untenable level of police shootings, which should make it clear to all concerned that killing suspected 'criminals' is counter-productive to reducing the murder rate," the group said in a statement.
"What is needed, as we search for solutions to our escalating murder rate, is the scrupulous observance of law by all.

"Any search for solutions to the rising number of homicides must also involve a search for solutions to the appalling rate of police homicides," said the rights group.

But police officers, who asked that their names not be used in this story, poured scorn on the JFJ, saying cops were fighting hardened criminals. The rights group, one cop said, wants to tell them how to do their jobs.

"If 2,000 criminals point guns at us and shoot at us, we're going to shoot back at them. Do they expect us to say we can't shoot anymore of them because we shoot 2,000 already, when the criminals out there are coming at us to kill us?" asked the policeman.

Police killings from 1995 to 2004

1995 - 131
1996 - 148
1997 - 149
1998 - 145
1999 - 151
2000 - 140
2001 - 148
2002 - 133
2003 - 113
2004 - 96
1982 - 236
1983 - 254
1984 - 358
1985 - 273
1986 - 179
1987 - 205
1988 - 181
1989 - 162
1990 - 148
1991 - 178
1992 - 145
1993 - 91
1994 - 125

Figures available for 1982 to 1994 combined numbers killed by police with those killed by soldiers and licensed firearm holders. Only a small number of these, however, would be by licensed firearm holders and members of the army.

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