Sligoville shootout raises rights questions after two officers, three civilians killed
Two police officers died following a shoot-out in Sligoville, St Catherine on October 16. A columnist asks whether silence on ethical doubts makes citizens complicit.
After Sligoville: grief, silence, and the question of accountability
Corporal Trevoy Shaw and Constable Devoney Rose are dead. Shaw was killed during a shoot-out in Five Miles, Sligoville, St Catherine on the morning of Friday, October 16, 2026. Rose died the following day after undergoing surgery at the Spanish Town Hospital. Their names, writes Anglican priest and human rights advocate Fr Sean Major-Campbell in jamaica-gleaner.com, deserve to be spoken plainly.
The two officers died while carrying out their mandate to serve and protect. For many Jamaicans, that fact alone is sufficient grounds for national outrage — and for silence on any other line of questioning.
'A burden of collective guilt'
Yet Major-Campbell argues that silence itself carries moral weight. Writing in his regular column, he draws on Christian theology to make the case: sins of omission and commission are both real. "We have sinned by what we have done and by what we have left undone," he quotes from the Eucharistic confession of the Church.
The shoot-out left three civilians dead in addition to the two officers. A child was injured and traumatised. The details of what happened that morning remain in dispute, and it is that gap — between what is known and what is not — that Major-Campbell says ought to prompt reflection rather than silence.
He sets out five positions circulating in public conversation, ranging from "gunmen should be killed even if they surrender" to "a better scenario would have been for some to be taken alive, if possible." He presents them without editorial ranking, noting that each reflects a real strand of Jamaican public opinion.
Police, church, and civil society
Major-Campbell is careful to distinguish between raising questions and undermining the Jamaica Constabulary Force. He notes that some of the strongest voices within the Church are themselves members of the JCF — officers who, he says, carry Christian values into their daily work and understand those values as inseparable from their commitment to justice and truth.
"It is important that we understand and be sensitive to the heightened tensions for the police in a context where the life of one of their members was taken and others threatened," he writes. "And we can do this while at the same time seeking answers that will affirm the integrity of our police."
The JCF, he argues, has grown considerably in the quality of its work. Raising questions about a specific operation need not, in his view, constitute an attack on that record.
The role of 'agents of the state'
Central to his argument is the principle that agents of the state act in the name of all citizens. That relationship, he contends, creates a legitimate space for civil society to ask difficult questions — not out of hostility to the police, but out of a shared interest in accountability and the rule of law.
He returns to a passage from his previous column: "Human rights work certainly requires an intellectual leap to process the rights of all citizens when some citizens trample on the rights of others. Those who are angry, understandably, may not have the capacity for such discourse in the aftermath of a mass murder situation."
That acknowledgement of emotional reality does not, in his framing, dissolve the obligation to seek answers. Rather, it describes the conditions under which that obligation becomes harder — and, perhaps, more necessary.
Church calls for peace
The Jamaica Umbrella Group of Churches has urged all Jamaicans to reject violence and work toward a safer and more peaceful nation. Major-Campbell endorses that call, but suggests it carries practical implications for how the country moves forward — including a commitment to protecting the human rights of all those involved in the Sligoville incident.
"The lives of two police and three civilians were taken," he writes. "A child was injured and traumatised. A nation has been left in shock and grief."
His column closes with a call for prayerful support for those who mourn, for those conducting investigations, and for the collective effort to build a just and peaceful Jamaica.
Fr Sean Major-Campbell is an Anglican priest and human rights advocate. Feedback can be directed to [email protected] and [email protected].
Source: Google News JM — Crime