Rev. Dr Glenroy Lalor, delivering his sermon on Sunday, July 27
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Rev. Dr Glenroy Lalor
Reverend Dr Glenroy Lalor, Pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Hal-Way-Tree, St. Andrew, has come out strongly in favour of the call for the police to wear cameras during their operations.
Reverend Lalor, in his sermon on Sunday, challenged the society to put more pressure on the Jamaica Constabulary Force to yield to the call of INDECOM [Independent Commission of Investigations] for the wearing of the cameras, citing the high number of police killings so far this year.
In that regard, he questioned the "silence" of many "with over a hundred and forty Jamaicans killed by the police... when all that INDECOM is asking for... is 'please, just wear the body camera so we can see that what you are saying is what really happened.'"
He said such silence becomes more difficult when faced by someone who has lost a loved one in such circumstances, recalling his own encounter with the mother of one of those police shooting victims; "someone sitting in this very church, crying tears" and relating how her mentally ill son was killed by the police.
Gaza
The Baptist minister did not confine his call for justice to domestic matters, pointing to Israel's conduct in its war with Hamas in the Gaza strip and its impact on innocent people, many of them facing starvation, as a prime example of actions that demand global condemnation.
He asked the question: "Is it okay for some people to die of starvation and the rest of the world just watch quietly?"
Reflecting on the Jamaican experience of Emancipation from slavery, he asserted that "no human being is truly free until all are free," and declared that "a liberated people (must be) a liberating people."
Deportations
Similarly, he raised alarm at the recent deportation by the United State Government of a Jamaican man, along with nationals of several other countries, to the small southern African state of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland)
"Is it okay for a powerful country to take a Jamaican and ship half-way across the world to another part of the world without anyone intervening to say this person has a home," he pressed.
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