Melville Cooke Oh why can't we roam
This open country?
Oh why can't we be what we want to be?
We want to be free
Three o'clock, roadblock...
Bob Marley and The Wailers
IN JAMAICA, only a few count as people whose basic rights are worth protecting. In fact, in Jamaica only a few count as people, the irony being that it is the mass of 'non-people' who keep this ridiculous stratification firmly in place.
That is a cornerstone of this society, making its more messy appearances in poor people lying in pools of blood and a stock CCN story about "police party was fired up, blah blah blah" and not so gory instances like the recent determination to get at corrupt traffic cops.
Taxi men have been saying it, persons who drive for pleasure and not business have been saying it, I wrote about it in a couple columns earlier this year but it took the voice of 'people' to prompt this probe.
Which I do not expect much of, by the way.
On Tuesday this newspaper reported that the previous day Police Commissioner Francis Forbes assigned a special team to probe allegations of corruption among traffic cops. However, the reason for the action became clear in the body of the story, which said that the son of an Acting Commissioner had been stopped and asked to "do something". And, in the last paragraph, it said that "at a public forum put on by the Kiwanis Clubs of Spanish Town and the Business District of Caymanas Gardens last week, the issue of police soliciting money
from motorists dominated the discussions".
KIWANIANS
Son of an Acting Commis-sioner. Kiwanis forum (not that the persons attending were all Kiwanians, but it does give it a certain clout).
This is despite Mr. Forbes' office "being bombarded with daily calls about police soliciting money from motorists."
The action does not come from the bombardment, which cannot have been just since the Kiwanis forum. It is a matter that people who matter, people who count as people, have been affected and so something even if it is a little token, which I hope not has to be done.
And the police expect people to co-operate with them in the fight against crime. Yeah. Right.
If the Commissioner and his crew are serious about cleaning up this rot, they can start with the Constable from St. Mary, about whom I made a report to the Police Complaints Depart-ment on Duke Street earlier this year. I wrote a column about the incident earlier this year. The short version is that he and twin ugly stopped me for speeding which I was not showed me reading on a radar device which had not been pointed at my car and I protested (including calling them "de bway dem" in a cell phone conversation with a friend) proceeded to search me and then search my car, declaring "a lock me waan lock yu up todey, a lock me waan lock yu up todey".
Of course, I went to court to meet it face to face on more level terms and, or course, it did not show. Twice. The judge dismissed the case on the third occasion, I believe, but not before I heard two or three other cases being called for the same Constable for the third or fourth time.
He was 'sick', but I do believe I saw him in Moneague stopping cars that same day. Or it could have been twin ugly.
START
So, if you want to make a start Commish, start there. And I can tell you a few prime money making spots, too. At the entrance to the Schwal-lenburgh mines in Faiths Pen police asked me for money there. On the Moneague bypass that's where I encountered the constable. On the long stretch in Discovery Bay I was half-approached there. In Rio Bueno a drunk policeman stopped a car I was in there one night. Stink a rum. In Falmouth a drunk policeman stopped me there about midnight one night. If I were a gunman it would have been so easy pickings. And let us not forget New Kingston, where a drunk policeman stopped me one night and announced "a white rum me drink y'nuh". "Eh-heh? It soon kill yu," I replied gently. In fact, the number of police cars which cruise the New Kingston area in the nights, one would think that not a ball of crack could be sold there, right? Right.
The most irritating thing is that not only do some it is certainly not all police officers who stop you on the road are for sale, it is that they are so damned cheap as well. If you are going to sell your integrity, for crissakes at least sell it for something that makes the person who bought you remark that your dignity came with a price. But no. I have heard of a policeman who took a $300 pay-off. That, ladies and gentlemen, barely covers a fish meal at Island Grill. With orange juice. Going large.
Pimpers Paradise, that's all she was...
-BMW
Melville Cooke is a
freelance writer.
