JAMAICA | Dalling Must Go: Integrity Commission Report Lays Bare Catastrophic Rot at the Heart of Jamaica's FLA

Falsified records, missing ammunition, destroyed evidence — PNP's Fitz Jackson says the CEO of the Firearm Licensing Authority has no business remaining in post for another day.

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica, By Calvin G. Brown  | June 4, 2026 - There are failures of management, and then there are failures of governance so profound they shake the foundations of public trust.

The tabling of Integrity Commission Report 37/2026 places the Firearm Licensing Authority — the very institution charged with regulating deadly weapons in Jamaica — squarely in the second category. And at the centre of that catastrophic collapse stands Chief Executive Officer Shane Dalling, a man the People's National Party says must resign immediately.

The findings are not ambiguous. Under Dalling's watch, ammunition belonging to private citizens went missing from the FLA's own vault. A deceased man's identity was used to fabricate sales records in a licensed dealer's name. And critical electronic evidence — the kind that could have answered the hardest questions — was permanently destroyed, with no backup in place. These are not the hallmarks of administrative sloppiness. They are the fingerprints of systemic rot.

“This is not mismanagement. This is a fundamental breakdown of law, order and public trust at the very agency responsible for regulating deadly weapons in Jamaica.” — MP Fitz Jackson, PNP Opposition Spokesman on National Security.

A Dead Man's Name and a Missing Paper Trail

The details in the Integrity Commission's report are as disturbing as they are damning. Using a deceased individual's identity to generate fictitious sales records goes beyond procedural failure — it is the deliberate manufacture of fraud within a state regulatory body.

That this occurred inside the Firearm Licensing Authority, an agency whose entire mandate rests on the integrity of its records, renders the breach especially grave. Jamaica's firearms registry is only as trustworthy as the data it holds. If that data can be fabricated, the entire regulatory architecture crumbles.

Then there is the matter of missing ammunition. Private citizens entrust their legally held rounds to the custody of the FLA's vault. That ammunition has gone missing is not a paperwork error — it is a security failure with potentially lethal implications.

Where did it go? Into whose hands? The Integrity Commission report raises the question. The silence from the FLA's leadership answers nothing.

Procedural Tightening Is Not Accountability

Minister of National Security Dr. Horace Chang has indicated that the FLA is tightening its firearm and ammunition storage and operational procedures. The PNP's Fitz Jackson is unimpressed — and rightly so.

Procedural tightening in the wake of confirmed corruption is the institutional equivalent of repainting a condemned building. It addresses the aesthetic, not the rot beneath.

“No CEO who presides over falsified records, missing ammunition and conveniently destroyed evidence should remain in post for another day,” Jackson said, and on this point, the logic is irrefutable.

Leadership accountability is not discharged by issuing new circulars. It is discharged by consequences. And the absence of consequence — the decision to retain Dalling despite the Commission's findings — is itself a statement.

It tells every public servant in Jamaica's security apparatus that the rules apply selectively, that protection from on high can substitute for performance and integrity.

The Government's Complicity Question

The PNP has gone further than calling for a resignation. The party has demanded a comprehensive, fully independent investigation into all matters identified in the Integrity Commission's report, with findings made public. This is not a political fishing expedition — it is the bare minimum that good governance requires.

If the Minister of National Security chooses instead to circle the wagons around a discredited CEO, he cannot escape the inference that this Government is more invested in protecting individuals than in protecting the integrity of the institutions they lead.

Jamaica's firearms regulatory regime sits at the intersection of public safety and organised crime. Any compromise of that regime — any signal that records can be fabricated, evidence can be destroyed and leadership can be shielded from consequence — reverberates far beyond the walls of the FLA. It is heard in the corridors of criminality as clearly as it is heard in the halls of Parliament.

The People Cannot Be Asked to Trust This

The PNP's call is unequivocal: Shane Dalling must resign. Not because the PNP demands it, but because the Integrity Commission of Jamaica — an independent constitutional body — has documented a record of failures under his leadership that leaves no other credible conclusion. Public institutions derive their authority from public trust. That trust, once forfeited through fraud, cannot be restored by the same leadership that forfeited it.

The Integrity Commission has done its job. Parliament has been informed. The only question that remains is whether this Government has the political courage to do what accountability demands — or whether it will choose, as too many governments before it have chosen, to let loyalty to individuals trump its obligations to the Jamaican people.

Mr. Dalling must resign. The truth must come out in full.

— 30 —