Mennonite Central Committee

The other side of paradise: Struggling for justice in Jamaica Grassroots group combats police brutality

Press Release, May 2001
Kingston, Jamaica

It's Thursday evening, and 40 members of Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) are gathered for their weekly meeting. Seated on folding chairs, members of this grassroots human rights organization reflect the diversity of Jamaica — from the ex-wife of a former prime minister to a Rastafarian with long dreadlocks tucked into a beret.

Seated in the front row is Katrina Hochstetler, a Serving and Learning Together (SALT) volunteer whose year here has immersed her in Jamaicans' struggles for a more just society. As part of JFJ's Response Team, she hears from families who have experienced police brutality and want help reporting it.

The seriousness with which the group discusses confidentiality rules reflects the danger families feel when they report police brutality. Some members speak from personal experience. After the meeting, Paula Capleton tells of the death of her oldest son. She stares straight ahead, her voice soft but filled with outrage.

On the night of July 4, 2000, she and her family were alarmed when they heard what sounded like gunfire outside their home in inner-city Kingston, she says. They called 1-1-9, Jamaica's equivalent of 9-1-1, and asked police to investigate.

Instead of searching outside, she says, police demanded to come in the house. Capleton's oldest son, 21-year-old Sean Robinson, was nervous because of previous run-ins with the law.

"He went into the closet and hid himself," Capleton remembers, "and the police started searching everywhere."

Police didn't answer her requests to know why or what they were searching for, Capleton says. Instead, they demanded to know where her son was as she followed them frantically from room to room.

As she watched, police shot at the closet where her son was hiding, pumping the door full of bullet holes.

"I ran into the closet and saw my son lying on his back. He was just staring, and there was blood all over. I started to scream," Capleton says.

Police did not respond to her pleas to take her son to the hospital; instead, they kicked her and pushed her into the closet as well, she says.

"They were just searching and searching. Then they took my son away." Robinson was declared dead at the hospital.

Capleton had heard of other, similar incidents of police brutality. She knew that Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) could help, so she contacted them for help reporting her son's death and following up on the case. She has also become an active member.

"It happened to my son. I joined up," she says.

Unfortunately, Capleton's is far from the only story of police brutality Hochstetler has heard at JFJ. She can list others: a boy shot because his nickname was similar to a criminal's, when police didn't take the time to check his identification; another incident in which police opened fire on a car they believed to be stolen and then gunned down a young passenger when the driver wrecked.

"Some police stations are worse than others. There's definitely class differentiation," Hochstetler says.

She and her colleagues help clients find lawyers, document statements and monitor their cases. They also do advocacy, community outreach and education, both with neighborhood residents and police.

Hochstetler's work has also connected with that of other Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) workers. JFJ has been involved in calling for justice for mentally ill street people abducted from Montego Bay in 1999, an incident that involved MCC workers' clients at a day shelter. JFJ has also called for safer, more efficient prisons and trial system.

Through the media and other advocacy efforts, they have succeeded in keeping the public's attention on several of these cases.

"Jamaica is an exciting place to work. It's a relatively small island, so you can have a fairly large impact fairly quickly," Hochstetler says.

On this island that most North Americans know only for its beaches, she and her MCC colleagues too often see Jamaica's underbelly. But they gain hope from the dedication and courage of Jamaicans - and, together, they are struggling against the injustices of the other side of paradise.