Former Cayman police commissioner dies aged 90

| 20/12/2014

(CNS): Former Cayman Islands commissioner of police, Jim Stowers, has died aged 90. Stowers first came to Cayman in in 1976 for two years to train the police and returned in 1980 to serve as commissioner of police, a post he held for five years. During the royal visit in 1983 Queen Elizabeth presented him with the Queens' Police Medal for distinguished service. While he was commissioner, he was very active in policing drug trafficking and money laundering measures, presenting papers and lectures at Interpol conferences in Europe, the Caribbean and USA, including the FBI, according to the local media in Cornwall, where Stowers lived. He was described by friends as “an exceptional, special gentleman”. (Photo: Former Police Commissioner Jim Stowers, left, with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip in the Cayman Islands in 1983)

Stowers served on a river class frigate in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, both in the Atlantic and the invasion of Sicily, reports the Torquay Herald Express.

After learning the 48 letters of the Japanese morse code, he volunteered to join wireless intelligence, which took him to Burma and French Indo China. When he was demobilised, Jim joined the Merchant Navy for a time as a radio officer on the Cunard troopship Franconia for the evacuation from Palestine and India.

Stowers began his police career in Torquay and he served 18 years in the CID in South Devon, including a spell in Brixham. He rose through the ranks to become acting assistant chief constable for Devon and Cornwall.

After returning home from the Cayman Islands in 1985, he lectured at the Bramshill Police College and became a research fellow at the University of Exeter, and tutor on the MA degree course in police and criminal justice.

Between 1986 and 1989 he undertook two surveys covering 11 dependent and independent countries in the Caribbean as head of team on behalf on the British government.

Stowers married his late wife, Eileen, in 1947 and the couple went on to have two sons, Jim and John. 

Stowers’ funeral will be held on Saturday at St Michael's Church, Teignmouth, at 11am.

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  1. Anonymous says:

    If my memory serves me correctly when he served 1976 to 1978 in the Cayman Islands it was not to train it was as the head of the CID. He then returned as the Compol leaving in 1983 not 1985. May his soul RIP.