THERE IS a fear coursing through the veins of the country that makes one's hair stand on end. It is the fear of an encounter with a policeman while going about our lawful business. A blue seam, a red seam, not even a khaki uniform is any guarantee of protection these days.

It is an attack upon our existence, and all our hopes for the future. It attacks the rule of law. Irrational, unpredictable, it is the most serious threat to life and sanity.

The other night I'm told, the police took up a gardener in Cherry Gardens. He was returning home on his bicycle to his employer's residence. The police threw him in the back of their squad car for a spliff, and riding without a light. He'd gone up the road to buy two cigarettes.

GANJA SMOKE

Ganja smoke may have been smelt at the gate of the residence where they now were. Perhaps it was the other worker at the gate who looked on in horror. But not the cook in the kitchen who could see the whole thing and was now raising the alarm to the householder's daughter. She took off in her small SUV and followed the squad car.

She followed them all around and all over the place. Once they left her community, she called her father on the cell who was still at work, told him where she was, and what she was doing. He instantly left to join her.

Now there were two citizens' cars trailing the police car. They lost the daughter, but the father kept on. He followed them behind Washington Boulevard, up Red Hills Road, and right back into Kingston. The police then drove into the Grants Pen Police Station and released their detainee without even requiring him to enter the station house.

WHITE JAMAICA

It may have helped the gardener's situation that the police had a tail for the entire time of nearly two hours. It may have helped that both the father and the daughter belong to the redoubtable Jamaican tribe of white Jamaica. The police therefore saw two vehicles being driven by white people following them. That might have had something to do with it too.

The daughter was already inside the police station making the report when the police arrived with her employee. Undoubtedly, all of it helped the poor gardener in his hour of torment and abiding fear. The poor fellow later said he kept telling the police "Dat ah mi boss behind us. See her dere! See im dere!" They still drove him all over the place. But it must have been the only thing that saved him from a pull-over and a beating and maybe even being killed, all over an alleged spliff and a bicycle without a light.

This black Jamaican now owes his life to the steadfastness and pluck of two white Jamaicans. They saved him from the worst ravages of police custody.

LOOKING IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES

When this episode is combined with the police treatment of two women in a car in downtown Kingston without ID, it is clear that the police are looking for the criminals in all the wrong places.

On TVJ, cell-camera footage was shown of that Orange Street encounter. Though grainy, it was still horrifying and quite audible. The aggression of the police was most appalling. It is ironic that the women were both sergeants from the police force, but in civilian clothing. The driver of the car kept saying so, and being called 'Woman' for her troubles, hauled out, and handcuffed. Since she was telling the truth, they too were released at the police station, but not before a broken finger for one of them.

If the police treat the police so, what possible hope have we of justice? None whatsoever. None from the police and none from the judicial system either.

What happened to the gardener is Latin American. That is not how we behave in Jamaica. What happened to the police women in civilian clothes is African. They were like women being pulled out of an African hut by primitive men brandishing spears. I am sad to see us lose what made us remarkable as a country. Before, it didn't matter if you were black, as long as you were well-behaved. Today, not even that matters anymore. As long as you're black, it's a baton in your head.

The Chinese are accustomed to this kind of treatment, all Asians in fact, and I must say they've prospered economically on it. A massacre in Tiannamen Square by state forces is almost unremarkable in a culture that admires the wisp of life more than life itself. But it's too late to try that in Jamaica. It will never take on. Being brutalised is not something we cherish. We do not wish to contemplate the death of a thousand cuts.

There's a Jamaican way of doing things, and it's not the way the Jamaican Constabulary Force has been doing it. I don't believe in giving them counselling either, just rid the force of the brutalisers and the corrupt for the sake of good order. Don't simply encrust it with Englishmen in high positions. A corrupt customs officer is one thing, but a corrupt policeman is lethal.

In bygone days, when a police officer stopped a car, the occupant was never afraid to alight and show papers, if he or she had them. The law says we can have a few days anyway. Today, you have to have them tattooed on your forehead and stick your head out the window.

TOTAL SURPRISE

Still, the best thing is to get out of the car and realise that the police are about to ask you questions but have not the slightest interest in listening to the answers. All these questions are a total surprise like: "Do you have a gun?"

The French philosopher Pascal once wrote: 'The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room'. The nasty and brutish behaviour of Jamaican police gives this fresh poignancy.

Nor can there be any confidence in venturing out. Not when Police Commissioner Lucius Thomas and Noel Hylton, chairman of the Police Services Commission toss the Reneto Adams reinstatement issue back and forth between them like a hot potato.

It is most unseemly when those so charged run from their responsibilities on public television. In circumstances like these, there can be no surprise when police officers themselves cause public disorder.