JAMAICA | Bulldozers Before Dawn: Who Authorised Coopers Pen — and Under Whose Order?

A judgment from 2010. A 3 a.m. police operation. Thirteen hours in custody and not a single charge. The Opposition’s land spokesman wants the court order published. Jamaicans for Justice wants to know what the police were doing there at all.

MONTEGO BAY, August 17, 2026 - At about three o’clock on the morning of Tuesday, August 11, residents of Coopers Pen in Trelawny woke to headlights, excavators and police. By the time the machines fell silent, roughly 20 houses — most of them concrete, several representing thirty years of partner draws and remittances — lay in rubble.

Residents say they had no chance to save furniture, appliances or tools. Some 40 households remain on the property under ODPEM tents, waiting to learn whether the crew returns for them.

Six days on, the question that matters most remains unanswered by anyone with the authority to answer it: under precisely what order was that land cleared, and who sent the police?

The order nobody has been shown

Opposition Spokesperson on Land and Works, Lothan Cousins, wants the document published immediately, and his is the sharpest argument yet brought to bear. He points to Civil Procedure Rule 46.2(1), which requires express permission of the court before a writ of execution may issue where six or more years have elapsed since the underlying judgment. The judgment here is dated April 2010. Sixteen years is not a technicality; it is nearly a generation.

“A judgment creditor cannot simply sleep on their rights for a decade and execute a possession order as of right.” — Lothan Cousins, MP

“We are demanding that this exact order be released immediately so we can verify whether it is lawful and whether it received the mandatory extension,” he said. Historical Court of Appeal rulings, he argues, confine the order strictly to the 99 occupants named in the original 2007 claim. “That order cannot be treated as a blank cheque. Removing anyone outside those 99 named parties without a fresh, independent and lawful court order is entirely illegal.”

If bailiffs and police acted on an expired order without confirming an extension was granted, the exposure does not rest with the developer alone. “If no extension was sought from the court and the state relied on an outdated order, the state is profoundly exposed,” Cousins said, urging affected residents to seek counsel and pursue damages against both private and state actors.

Thirteen hours, no charge

The second question belongs squarely to the State. Before the first wall came down, police entered the community and detained a group of men — reports range from more than a dozen to as many as 30, most aged 19 to 30. They were taken to the Falmouth Police Station, held for roughly 13 hours, fingerprinted, photographed, their phones taken, then released without charge. Residents say the only explanation offered was that lawmen were searching for firearms.

Jamaicans for Justice has placed that operation under formal scrutiny. Executive Director Mikel Jackson argues that detention, fingerprinting and the seizure of personal property significantly interfere with the constitutional rights to freedom of the person, movement, liberty and privacy — and that the burden falls on the State to show such measures were lawful, necessary and proportionate.

“The mere presence of police at a demolition exercise does not, on its own, justify the detention and processing of residents as though they were criminal suspects.” — Jamaicans for Justice

JFJ has also questioned the statutory basis for the fingerprinting. Absent a court order following a formal charge, the Fingerprints Act permits prints only where the person consents after being told of the right to refuse — not, the group says flatly, as a fishing exercise.

Its questions to the Jamaica Constabulary Force are narrow and fair: why were officers present at a private demolition, and was the detention part of that operation or a separate police action? The Force has not publicly answered either. The sequencing unsettles too — the able-bodied men were removed first, leaving women, children and the elderly to face the excavators.

The case for the other side

It must be said plainly, because partisans on both benches are flattening this story: the landowner’s rights are not fictional. New Falmouth Resorts Limited sued 99 occupants of the Orange Grove property in 2007. In April 2010, Justice Donald McIntosh ruled for the company, ordering recovery of possession and $50,000 in damages against each defendant for trespass. A judgment lawfully obtained is not void because it is inconvenient.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness has been unequivocal that squatting cannot be endorsed, while conceding the images are disturbing. Trelawny Northern MP Tova Hamilton and Falmouth Mayor Collen Gager say Government had no hand in the exercise. That defence has a hole in it the width of a police cordon. The bailiff was there. The police were there. The police are the State — and somebody signed the deployment order.

There is a further wrinkle. The company is reportedly facing removal from Jamaica’s companies register for failing to disclose its beneficial owner — a requirement tightened when Jamaica exited the Financial Action Task Force grey list in 2024. So an entity that has not told the country who owns it sent bulldozers onto occupied land before dawn, under an order it has not shown the public.

Publish the order

Opposition Leader Mark Golding has called for a national inquiry into how court-protected private land rights are enforced against unprotected communities. That inquiry is warranted. But it is a long instrument, and a short one lies within reach. Publish the order. Name the officer who authorised the deployment. State the legal basis on which those men were fingerprinted.

Three disclosures, none of them onerous, and the cloud over Coopers Pen either lifts or hardens into something the courts must settle. Until then, the silence talks. With official surveys putting roughly one in five Jamaicans in informal settlements, August 11 was not an isolated property dispute. It was a rehearsal — and Jamaica is entitled to know whose order the machines were following.

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