Tony DeyalI SAT in my car waiting while traffic whizzed past me at about 100 miles an hour and a policeman painstakingly jotted down information from my driver's licence and insurance. I had been doing just over 60 mph on a virtually empty two-lane highway early on a Saturday morning. The policeman seemed to be giving me a chance to say something, perhaps make a suggestion about how we could both avoid his getting writer's cramp, or how I could contribute to his maintaining the high lifestyle to which all policemen aspire and most achieve on very small salaries.
In a society where the majority of people live beyond their means, the police are an example of sacrifice and thrift that deserves notice, if not by me, certainly by the Inland Revenue Department or the Internal Affairs Department of the Police Force, if one exists in this country.
The two policemen who had stopped me were based in the city of Chaguanas. On Saturdays, around the same time I was stopped, Chaguanas is a chaotic and very crowded marketplace. Merchants complain about the high crime rate and the fact that the police are either never around or take too long to respond. In fact, this is the story of the whole country. The pizza and fried chicken get to your home before the police.
One story has it that a stranger walked hurriedly into a Chaguanas store. He asked the owner, "Have you seen any police around?" The owner replied, "You must be joking. You can never find police when you need them." The stranger smiled and pulled out a gun, "In that case, hand over all the money from the cash register and the gold chain you're
wearing."
As I waited for the policeman to complete writing up the ticket, I realised that our experience of the police in Trinidad has always been more negative than positive. I remember policemen visiting my father's little shop, calling for alcohol or groceries, and leaving without paying. The policemen who came to check the premises for the liquour licence had to get a bottle of whisky. As Sparrow sang in the Fifties, "You give a dance, or a christening/ Policeman walk in, is you whisky he drinking/And when he leaving the christening as man/You have to put something in he hand."
Our luminaries of law enforcement also have a much-deserved reputation for a complete lack of incandescence or fluorescence or lumens or whatever the unit of measurement is. In terms of candlepower they would never wax warm. Recently, when they raided a politician's home for incriminating documents their eyes lit up when they saw that he had a computer. They seized his monitor in glee and took it with them to the station, confident that they had in their possession the evidence they needed.
I wanted to ask the policeman why he wasn't in Chaguanas trying to stop the crime there instead of terrorising motorists. However, I have become very cynical about the police and know that sometimes, when on a weekend in the middle of the month some policemen find their funds low and the demands from the many ladies they support high, they go out and set up a speed trap. It is also possible that they might have been unable to spell "Chaguanas" and so went out on the Butler Highway, "butler" being easier to spell. When I recounted the incident to one of my friends, he said bluntly, "You lucky." I protested, "I had to pay $200 when I am unemployed and you tell me I lucky?" "Yes you lucky," he stressed. "They could have kidnapped you."
My friend was not joking. There are policemen who are wanted or have been held on kidnapping charges. There are policemen in jail or on trial for a variety of offences ranging from fraud to robbery. There are policemen who have beaten people mercilessly and are still in the Police Service. The situation gives rise to the question, "How many police officers does it take to break an egg?" The answer is "None. It attempted to escape and fell down on a baton."
The Government is now attempting to reform the Police Service while, simultaneously, coming up with a Crime Plan developed without consultation with the Commissioner of Police. However, in spite of demands for action against crime from all sectors of the population, the Government continues to deny that there is a major crime problem in Trinidad and Tobago. The media, particularly those who are on the also aptly-named, crime "beat" continue to publish long lists of officers involved in various raids or investigations. Sometimes the lists are longer than the stories. The reporters also use police language, describing plastic-buckets as "pig-tail" buckets, even in a story about a very Hindu home where anything dealing with pork would be taboo. The media use the police jargon of "crocus" bags, whatever that is. Certainly, these bags are not related to the saffron-coloured flower of that name.
As the policeman continued to write my ticket, I wanted to tell him to go look for the Drug Barons they constantly promise to arrest. But I relented. He looked like the type who would arrest Bo Peep because she had a crook with her. Fortunately, I had only committed a minor offence. Had I swallowed some Viagra it would have made me a hardened criminal.
Tony Deyal was last seen saying that the police arrested a lock-smith recently because he was behaving suspiciously. They said when they arrived on the scene of the crime, they found him making a bolt for the door.
