Senior commanders of the Jamaica Constabulary Force have long dismissed accusations of unlawful killings and crime scene manipulation as exaggerated, noting that officers work in dangerous gang-ridden environments where illegal firearms are numerous. [...] in an unprecedented investigation, 27 police officers across the island are now facing charges of murder brought by a commission created by Parliament in 2010 to probe allegations against security forces. The Independent Commission of Investigations says at least nine other slayings listed by police as unsolved homicides committed by unknown gunmen in Clarendon may actually involve shootings by officers. Susan Goffe, director of Jamaicans for Justice, a civic group founded in 1999 to be a watchdog for state abuse, said the allegation of fake reporting "raises the question of whether there are many more persons being killed by police than are being reported." Since 2000, security forces have reported killing nearly 3,000 people on this island of 2.7 million. A tiny percentage of the cases ever made it to the courts, and only one Jamaican officer has been convicted of an unlawful killing since 2006, according to a 2013 human rights report by the U.S.