(Jamaica Gleaner) In just over 10 years, members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) fatally shot more than 2,000 civilians in alleged shoot-outs and other confrontations.

Data from the Bureau of Special Investigations (BSI), obtained through the human-rights lobby group Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ), show that 1,963 civilians were shot fatally by the police between July 1999 and December 2009.

This includes 272 fatal shootings in 2007, the highest in any single year in recent history.

Official data for this year are not yet available, but the latest unofficial count shows more than 150 fatal shootings involving members of the security forces.

This does not include the more than 70 persons killed during the May 24 incursion by the security forces into Tivoli Gardens.

The fatal shootings by the police have attracted the attention of human-rights activists locally and abroad, with increasing concern about the slow pace of the investigations into these incidents, and the even slower pace of trials in the cases where cops are charged.

Dr Carolyn Gomes, executive director of JFJ, decried the high number of police fatalities during the last decade.

“It’s an appalling number. It’s more than should be tolerable, more than should be acceptable,” she argued.

With numerous allegations that many of these fatal shootings were extrajudicial, Gomes lamented that of the approximately 2,000 during the period, only one policeman was convicted of manslaughter.

He was subsequently freed on appeal.

“There has been no justice for any of them,” Gomes said, even as she was quick to point out that not all the police killings during the period were extrajudicial.