Citizens Action for Principle and Integrity (CAPI) has called for the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) and Police Commissioner Owen Ellington to probe allegations of misconduct by investigators in the much-publicised Irwin rape case in St James.

In a release issued this afternoon, CAPI's co-convenor Dennis Meadows claimed that the civil rights of the two accused men, who have since been acquitted of the charge by the courts, were violated when police investigators in the case from the Freeport Police Station in Montego Bay reportedly took and distributed photographs of them to the public via smartphones ahead of a scheduled identification parade. According to Meadows, this was done in an attempt to appease the public.

"CAPI asserts that this puts into the question the integrity of the police investigative process and the extent to which the police will go to secure a conviction, even at the risk of the real perpetrators remaining at large," the release from CAPI said.

"From the onset, we believe that undue influence from the executive was brought to bear on the investigations by the police, through the participation by the minister of national security in a protest action in Sam Sharpe Square," the release continued.

Further, CAPI said "the involvement of the head of CISOCA, Superintendent Gladys Brown, in said demonstration, we deemed as inappropriate as a senior police officer, and one who was integrally involved in the investigation".

CAPI said the alleged misconduct of the police which resulted in the violation of the accused civil rights was tantamount to the Trayvon Martin case in the United States, which the public should be equally concerned about and quickly condemn.