JAMAICA'S most colourful policeman will put away his guns and ride off into the sunset in his red sports car when he begins his retirement from the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) in August.

Adams

Senior Superintendent Reneto DeCordiva Valentino Adams, once described by a writer as "the nemesis of the gunman", will end a 41-year career with the well-known bravado which made him famous and feared.

Confirming his pending retirement, he told the Observer yesterday that he couldn't wait to get on with his life.
"By August I will end my time with the JCF. This is 41 years for which I have no regrets," he said. "When you have a year-and-half to go before retirement, the JCF tell you to make preparation for retirement and I have done that. So I am just waiting on my time to go."

SSP Adams, who will turn 60 on July 11, 2008, has known no other life but that of a cop, bringing to the task titillating controversy, unbridled bravado and unmatchable flair.

But the price has been heavy. Sixty-nine death threats in 28 years; never being able to enjoy family life in public for fear of the evil that men could do to his loved ones; summary transfers for standing up against perceived corruption and the like.

Adams' harshest critics say he is a loose cannon, because he mouths whatever comes to mind, never stopping long enough to worry that he could be ruffling feathers from constable to commissioner, from politician to businessman.

But his critics admit that everywhere that Reneto Adams walks in the land, ordinary folks flock to touch the hem of his garment, which often resembles something out of a futuristic action flick.

"For sure, SSP Adams is a complex character. Men often can't decide whether he is the anti-hero or the superhero. Human rights activists insinuate that he is not above extra-judicial killings, despite producing no evidence so far to substantiate such claims," according to an Observer article on Adams in 2005.

The rights groups pointed to celebrated cases like the so-called Braeton Seven in which seven young men were killed by members of his Crime Management Unit (CMU) in an ill-fated house in Portmore; the shoot-out in Tivoli Gardens in which 27 persons, among them a soldier and a policeman, lost their lives; the Crawle incident that claimed the lives of four persons in the sleepy Clarendon village, and the slaying of Andrew Phang of Grants Pen. Inquiries into Braeton, Tivoli and Crawle exonerated Adams and his CMU colleagues.

The Crawle trial involving forensic evidence by Scotland Yard detectives represented a kind of Waterloo for Adams, even though it, too, ended in the acquittal of the men of non-capital murders.

But as a consequence of the incident, the then police commissioner, Francis Forbes disbanded the CMU and Adams was reassigned to a desk job at the Mobile Reserve Unit, apparently to serve out his remaining days in the force.

Yesterday, Adams remained as defiant as ever, saying his record as a policeman spoke for itself.

He said the police were today asked to police a rotten society and there was both the appearance and perception that criminals' rights were more important than those of law-abiding citizens.

"Law-abiding citizens never had anything to fear from me. They were never in danger of my policing. The people who I had a problem with were murderers, robbers and rapists," he insisted.

It was unusual for the controversial cop not to have any comments on some of the new methods introduced by new Police Commissioner Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin.
Instead he said he was looking forward to his pension and pursuing other interests.