Hartley Neita, ContributorThe new headliners on the public stage is the choir of 100 policemen who gave their first show on East National Heroes Circle last Monday.
Reports are that our leading record producers are fighting for the rights to produce the first video by these degauss. It is to be released to record shops during the Labour Week celebrations beginning next Sunday.
The title of the video is We Big an' Bad. The promotional newsletter being distributed describes how they held the Minister of Finance, Dr. Omar Davies, hostage, preventing him for getting to a meeting of the Cabinet on time, and demanding that he should give them a blank cheque.
The chorus on the video is 'Me No Have No Money, Only Love', sung by Davies with background harmony by Assamba and Henry-Wilson, and dear darling Deka.
The video ends with cameo shots of Simpson Miller embracing and whispering wooing words to the cops, "Dis dem," she says of Davies and Phillips, "When I come into my glory I'll give you loads of love an' plenty din-din."
Now, putting fun and joke aside, it's not that I regard what the police did at Heroes Circle as a joke. It's just that sometimes you have to take serious things and laugh at them if you want to live a sane life.
Throw away support
For, for the life of me I cannot understand how the police corps threw away the national support and goodwill which enveloped them following the murder of three of their members in nine hours by well-armed criminals.
It was the first time, I can recall, there was such an outpouring of sympathy for the police. For the first time, I believe, the whole country discovered that the police force is the only bastion between the criminals in our society, and us.
I well understand the
frustration policemen and women have been feeling over the long delay in their wage
settlement. But it is not the first time. And it will be settled, and not by any 47 per cent.
And then to announce that 6,000 of them would be singing and shouting motivational slogans in an all-night vigil, leaving the country unprotected, was callous.
These are the men who have sworn to "serve, protect and reassure" the Jamaican people.
What is worse, they did not walk, travel by bus, or in their private cars to the site of the vigil, but by police cars and motorcycles and using gasolene paid for by us.
They were not satisfied. Again travelling in police vehicles and on police motorcycles, they paraded opposite the offices of the Ministry of Finance and blocked the Minister from
leaving his office.
Against the law?
Now is this not against the law? Can policemen prevent a member of the public from going about his/her lawful business when he/she has not committed an offence?
Are these the men and women the Government is planning to use to relieve us of some of our civil rights?
What would they have done if the Minister had not been kind enough to talk to them? Shoot him dead and place a firearm in his hand and issue a report through their communications centre not only claiming that he pulled a gun on them, but that it was illegal or that it was the same firearm that killed one or more of the 136 members of the Force since 1990?
The officers who were issued vehicles and motorcycles last Monday morning and used them to travel to the demonstration should be charged for the
gasolene used.
There was no strike on, so why did they abandon their posts? Everyone of them should be docked a day's pay.
The song they were singing about "locking down the country tighter than a sardine can" is a clear threat to society. Surely they should be charged.
These men and women have no right to be in the police force. They have no respect for the rights of others and no respect for authority.
When will the commissioner send their names to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Police Service Commission?
