Not all police killings are extra-judicial acts says Jamaican Minister Chang

National Security Minister, Dr Horace Chang, has prompted to dispel the notion among some parts of the society that all police shots are extra-judicial killings.

Tuesday, 1st December 2020

National Security Minister, Dr Horace Chang, has prompted to dispel the notion among some parts of the society that all police shots are extra-judicial killings. "There is a trend to change every single police shooting as extra-judicial killing. Now that again is something that failure to announce what the police have done is difficult," said Chang. He was speaking in St James after touring three police stations in Montego Bay. Chang pointed to the police shooting of a man hours after he supposedly started a gun attack on a police team, which left three cops dead and another injured in St Catherine back in June of this year. "Some people in St Catherine shot four police officers, three died eventually. When he was being apprehended, he started the fire on the police, and when he was killed, it comes out in the newspaper as extra-judicial killing. Something back with that kind of language," the security minister said. Reports are that about 5 am on June 12, a police team from the St Catherine North division began under heavy gunfire after going to premises in Horizon Park in the parish. Further reports are that four of the cops were shot and injured in the shooting. They were rushed to a medical facility, where two of the officers, Detective Corporal Dane Biggs and Constable Decardo Hylton, were declared dead. The man who was said to have been behind the Horizon Park attack, 39-year-old Damion Hamilton, was shot dead by the police in Cooreville Gardens, St Andrew hours after the fatal crime on the police team. Superintendent Leon Clunis, who led the police team at Horizon Park, died in hospital two weeks later.