Police officers in Jamaica carry out unlawful killings on the orders of state authorities or with their complicity, evidence gathered by Amnesty International suggests.

Research by the human rights organisation points to a strong likelihood that state-sponsored executions take place in the country, a report published on Wednesday said.

Amnesty welcomed recent reductions in the numbers of civilians killed by police in Jamaica, but said that officers perpetuated a culture of fear in which evidence was tampered with, witnesses were terrorised and intimidated and weapons were planted on victims of police killings.

“Jamaica’s shocking culture of fear and violence is allowing police officers to get away with hundreds of unlawful killings every year. Shocking injustice is the norm,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International.

“Unlawful killings of young men and terrorizing their relatives into silence seems to be the alternative to proper investigations into crimes. Over the last two decades, Jamaica’s ‘fight violence with violence’ approach to crime is not only short-sighted but has proven utterly ineffective in tackling the root causes of violence.”

The report Waiting in Vain: Unlawful Police Killings and Relatives’ Long Struggle for Justice said: “Information gathered … points to a strong likelihood of the existence of individual police officers or even units tasked with carrying out extrajudicial executions on the orders of some governmental authorities or with its complicity or acquiescence.”

Since 2000, members of the Jamaican constabulary force (JCF) have allegedly killed 3,000 people, according to figures from Amnesty and Indecom, the police watchdog body.

Police killings have been decreasing in frequency since Indecom began its work in 2010. Last year, 101 people were allegedly killed by officers, compared to 210 in in 2011 and 258 in 2013.

But Amnesty said there had been limited progress in addressing police impunity, lack of accountability and policing methods that fall far short of international standards. Three out of every five people shot by police died from their injuries. Between January and October 2016, 92 people were killed by law enforcement officials – an average of two killings by police a week.

The report said longstanding practices of tampering with evidence, leaving victims to “bleed out” and the use of unlawful killings as an alternative to arrest and lengthy criminal proceedings continued.

The mother of Mario Deane, who died after a severe beating in a police lockup, told researchers she could barely recognize her son’s swollen and disfigured face when she was initially told by police that he had “fallen off his bunk”, the report said.

Mario Deane died after a beating in a police lockup. Photograph: Handout

The brother of another victim, Nakiea Jackson, witnessed police dragging his limp body by its feet to a police vehicle, throwing it in the back, and driving off. In other cases, family members were witnesses to direct threats by police officers to their relatives, who were later killed by police.

Evidence suggests single police officers were often responsible for multiple killings. According to Indecom, in one case a single police officer has been implicated in 22 separate police shootings.

In 2013, the watchdog charged 13 officers operating out of the Clarendon division with murder after receiving information, from a former police informant and other witnesses, that police officers in Clarendon were selected by senior police officers for the specific objective of murdering people. It is alleged that the officers killed 60 people over a number of years. They have yet to come to trial.

The work of Indecom is cited by some as a reason for the reduction in police killings, but Amnesty said the watchdog was constantly being challenged by the police and other state bodies and a special criminal court set up to conduct inquests into alleged police killings was chronically underfunded. By 2013, the special coroner’s court had a backlog of 300 cases.

The police watchdog has charged nearly 100 officers with offences, but chronic delays meant only eight cases had been completed and one murder conviction secured.

Amnesty International interviewed more than 50 relatives of 28 people believed to have been unlawfully killed by the police between 2003 and 2014. The report said: “Most had experienced intense and pervasive harassment and intimidation by police in their pursuit of justice, causing them further mental suffering. In some of the cases documented for this report, police treatment of victims’ families constitutes cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment or punishment.”

Amnesty made a series of recommendations, including calling for:

the Jamaican parliament to condemn extrajudicial and unlawful killings by police,



an increase in Indecom’s budget,



Jamaica to sign the international Convention Against Torture,



police reform and



for the immediate removal of all officers and units involved in fatal shootings to assess their future suitability for deployment.

“If authorities in Jamaica are serious about tackling the country’s shocking levels of police killings and violence, they must urgently promote a deep police and justice reform to address not only the number of police murders but the root causes of the problem,” said Guevara-Rosas.

Many relatives of the dead told researchers police stigmatized their communities for being poor.

Amnesty said witnesses repeatedly told them: “They have no respect,” “They kick off doors, without a warrant,” “If you try and answer them back they try and brutalize you and accuse you of attacking the police,” “The government gives them power to kill we.”

One woman said: “Some of dem come in their uniform. But when they come to kill yuh pickney [your child], they take off their badge… and they come in a mask ... ”