Owen ellington biography

This 18º NORTH SPECIAL INVESTIGATION started in 2014, when Jamaica’s then Commissioner of Police, Owen Ellington, suddenly retired. His retirement came amid investigations into death squads in the police force during his tenure and also as a commission of enquiry was about to get underway into the 2010 actions of Jamaica’s security forces during a raid on West Kingston that left more than 70 people dead. The raid was connected to a hunt for now-convicted drug lord, Christopher "Dudus" Coke, who, at the time, was wanted by the U.S. on drugs and weapons charges.

This 18º NORTH INVESTIGATION explores policies that Mr. Ellington enforced while he was commissioner, and questions whether his own family's business affairs conflicted with the very directives he set out for the force. Mr. Ellington is now Director of the Centre for Security, Counter Terrorism and Non-Proliferation at the Caribbean Maritime University, a government-funded institution.

Here’s our special report:

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   Born on July 27 1962, in Glengoffe, north east St Catherine, some 22 miles out of Kingston, Owen Lloyd Ellington was appointed Police Commissioner April 5, 2010.

   He is the 27th Police Commissioner of Jamaica.

   Mr. Ellington is a past student of the Glengoffe High School and was enlisted in the force on the August, 1, 1980.

   He is the holder of a Bachelor of Science in human resource management from the University of Technology Jamaica and a Master of Science in national security and strategic studies from the University of the West Indies.

   Mr Ellington also earned professional certificates from numerous universities abroad, including a certificate in national security and strategy from the University of Beijing, China and a postgraduate certificate in transnational security, stability and democracy from the National Defence University Centre for Hemispheric Defence Studies in Washington DC, USA.

   Events under his stewardship

   – The West Kingston Incursion May 2010 – when security forces went after the former strongman Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, for extradi

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   Owen Ellington: Chief guardian of a nation at war with itself

   Due to press problems last week that resulted in limited circulation of the Daily Observer, we republish today part one of the two part interview with Police Commissioner Owen Ellington to satisfy reader

   OWEN Ellington, for his sins, is the 27th police commissioner of Jamaica. And in the script written by his ardent admirers, of which there are not a few, he is already the best of them all.

   But the job of top cop of Jamaica is no popularity contest. Ponder aloud, if you will, that most reasonable of questions. How does Owen Ellington sleep at night, if uneasy lies the head that wears a crown? For, as commissioner of police, he must shoulder the unpalatable, nay, ominous burden of being chief guardian of a nation.

   Forget dubious claims of having more churches per square mile than any other country in the world, this is no Sunday school by any stretch of the imagination. This is a nation at war with itself. Not only must Ellington dispatch his men and women, often to their deaths (oh if only he could avoid it)