JAMAICA | Behold the Pale Green Horse: Death Squad Revisited

“I looked, and there was a pale green horse. Its rider was named Death…” — Revelation 6

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica, June 1, 2026 - By O. Dave Allen | The Jamaica Constabulary Force stands today at a dangerous crossroads. On one path lies modern, intelligence-driven policing rooted in technology, forensic science, strategic targeting, and respect for human rights.

On the other lies the old road — dark, crude, colonial and stained with blood — the seductive doctrine that unlawful force and fear are legitimate instruments of public order.

The tragedy is that the JCF is now blessed with some of the best and brightest officers in its history. Many are highly educated, technologically competent, internationally trained, and deeply committed to professional service.

Yet their brilliance is too often overshadowed and dimmed by the lingering shadow of an apparent death-squad culture and an administration seemingly trapped in the delusion that Jamaica’s reduction in murders is primarily the result of extrajudicial killings rather than sophisticated policing and wider socioeconomic changes.

That narrative is false.

Crime reduction in Jamaica cannot honestly be explained by brute force alone. The decline in murders is tied to several converging realities: intelligence-led operations, enhanced surveillance technology, improved communication systems, demographic shifts, migration patterns, social interventions, gang fragmentation, international cooperation, and the exhaustion of certain criminal networks.

Yet instead of embracing these modern realities, sections of the political directorate continue to romanticize “hard policing” as though fear itself is a sustainable national security policy.

It is not.

Fear may silence communities temporarily, but it can never build trust. Fear may suppress symptoms for a moment, but it cannot heal the disease. Fear eventually corrodes the legitimacy of the state itself.

We have walked this road before.

In my 2010 article The Death Squad, I warned that societies traumatized by violence often become vulnerable to moral collapse. Under the pressure of fear, otherwise decent citizens begin surrendering long-held principles.

They begin tolerating barbarism so long as the victims are “criminals,” “garrison youths,” or poor young men from communities already abandoned by the state.

That is how democracies decay.

History repeatedly teaches that once the state normalizes unlawful killing, there is no safe boundary. Today it may be the poor. Tomorrow it may be the dissenter, the activist, the journalist, or the inconvenient citizen. The line separating law enforcement from lawlessness begins to disappear.

This is why the recent controversies surrounding police killings have sparked such deep public anxiety. It is not merely about individual incidents. It is about the growing suspicion that portions of the state have become too comfortable with death as policy.

The danger is not simply the rogue cop. The greater danger is the environment that excuses him, protects him, rewards him, or quietly signals approval through coded political language.

Whenever leaders imply that legality is secondary to results, they create fertile ground for abuse.

Jamaica cannot modernize policing while clinging to colonial methods of social control.

The old crime suppression model was built for empire, not democracy. It treated poor Black communities as occupied territories rather than equal citizens under the law. That mentality still survives in pockets of the system, even as the country claims to embrace twenty-first century governance.

The JCF needs transformation not merely in equipment, but in philosophy.

It needs leadership capable of fully transitioning the institution from reactive militarized policing to intelligence-led democratic policing. It needs leaders who understand that preserving life is not weakness but the highest expression of state legitimacy.

Dr Horace Chang has reached the level of his competence in this portfolio. The time has come for renewal and generational change in the political leadership overseeing national security. Jamaica requires a new champion — someone capable of aligning the political directorate with the increasing sophistication, education, and professionalism emerging within sections of the Force itself.

The country cannot continue operating with a modern police force trapped inside an outdated political doctrine.

This moment demands courage.

Not the courage to pull triggers recklessly, but the courage to reform institutions honestly. The courage to confront abuse even when politically inconvenient. The courage to reject the dangerous fantasy that extrajudicial killings are evidence of strength.

Real strength lies in discipline. Real strength lies in accountability. Real strength lies in restraint under pressure

The preservation of life must become the unquestioned default position of the Jamaica Constabulary Force. Force must remain the last resort, not the first instinct. Evidence must be protected. The injured must receive care. The dead must be treated with dignity. Every police killing must face independent scrutiny without political interference or emotional manipulation.

Anything less risks returning Jamaica to the pale green horse whose rider is Death.

And history warns us what follows close behind.

-30-