KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Jamaica's top police commander on Tuesday condemned a recent surge of killings by vigilante mobs in the Caribbean country, reminding citizens that taking the law into their own hands is a serious crime.
The statement from Police Commissioner Owen Ellington came two days after a crowd of furious residents in the southern city of Portmore fatally beat and stomped Dwight Lester, a 29-year-old mason, after he was allegedly caught breaking into a house in the middle of the night.
"Every case of mob killing is classified as murder and will be thoroughly investigated by police so that those responsible are arrested and charged," Ellington warned.
He said Jamaicans should have "every confidence in the justice system."
But authorities say Jamaica's justice system has a backlog of more than 400,000 unresolved criminal cases, and confidence in the police is typically low in impoverished communities on the island, which is one of the world's most violent countries even as its placid tourist resorts are virtually untouched by crime.
For many years, mobs of angry Jamaicans have occasionally resorted to deadly vigilante justice against people suspected in a homicide, rape or even a burglary. There have been at least four mob killings in the last few weeks.
A few days before Lester was killed, a 23-year-old beggar in rural Clarendon parish was stabbed and stomped to death by villagers who said he fatally beat another local man who refused a demand to hand over a Jamaican bill worth just over $1.
Before that, a high school teacher was murdered by a mob after he hit four people with his car. The killing apparently occurred shortly after another car accident had stopped traffic on a busy road in St. Catherine parish, near the capital of Kingston.
But the incident that made the most headlines was a mob's slaying of 43-year-old Donovan Hazley in the Trelawny community of Zion shortly after the bodies of two young boys were found floating in a river.
Townspeople firebombed Hazley's home, killing him and injuring his teenage daughter, because they suspected Hazley was protecting another man who the residents were convinced was responsible for killing the boys, possibly even raping them. An autopsy later showed the two boys drowned in the Martha Brae River and had not been murdered.
Several civic groups in Jamaica strongly condemned mob killings, saying vigilante justice has no place in civilized society.
"Violence, vengeance and mob rule will never be the solutions for the many serious problems we face as a people," the civic groups said in a recent statement about Hazley's slaying.
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