News Americas, WASHINGTON, D.C., Tues. Dec. 15, 2020: The U.S. State Department has banned six former Jamaican cops who were part of the now disbanded Crime Management Unit within the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF).
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in marking World Human Rights Day recently, said the US is committed to using every appropriate tool and authority to draw attention to violations and abuses of human rights, “no matter where or when they occur, and to promote accountability for those responsible for those violations and abuses.”
The State Department said six former CMU members – Devon Orlando Bernard, Reneto DeCordova Adams, Patrick Anthony Coke, Shayne St Aubyn Lyons, Leford Gordon, and Roderick Anthony Collie were involved in extrajudicial killings and are banned from travelling to the US, for what has been described as the gross violations of human rights.
This is in reference to an incident 2003 in which two women and two men were killed in a house in the district of Crawle in the central parish of Clarendon by members of the CMU led by the then Senior Superintendent of Police Reneto Adams.
The CMU members had gone into Crawle in search of alleged gangster Bashington “Chen Chen” Douglas, who was forced to flee Spanish Town – the parish capital of St Catherine, after surviving a gun attack.
Douglas survived what the police said was a shoot-out, but was fatally shot three years later.
The CMU was later disbanded and Adams was taken off active duty pending the outcome of the trial for him and the other CMU cops for the murder.
In December 2005, the cops were all acquitted in the Home Circuit Court in what Adams had described as the “mother of all trials”.
Pompeo said the US is committed to using every appropriate tool and authority to draw attention to violations and abuses of human rights, “no matter where or when they occur, and to promote accountability for those responsible for those violations and abuses.”
