Melville Cooke

Who can afford to run will run, but what about those who can't?

They will have to stay.

- Buju Banton, Untold Stories

The pictures of Dr. Ford leaving hospital were horrible. After the beating at his Port Henderson Road, Portmore, businessplace on Easter Sunday night, when he left the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) last Thursday afternoon he looked like a man who had been professionally whupped.

And, if the allegations are true, then at least one of the policemen who put it on on Ford at the Fun Citi attraction has a track record that would suggest he is not an amateur in this business of whupping. While it is up to the professional standards branch of the Jamaica Constabulary Force to probe the matter, this was a beating done to a very high professional standard. As far as batterings go, a picture of Dr. Ford leaving the hospital could be displayed on the professional beaters wall of honour with a caption, 'Now that is how it is disciplined without actually killing it'.

As we were informed a few days after the beating, one of the four policemen allegedly involved in the matter had been reported 19 times previously for similar actions.

Major news coverage

And I ask, what about the other 19? The allegations of Ford's beating have received major news coverage, front-page treatment, no less, and he even got one whole editorial for himself in this newspaper. OK, so every single whupping allegedly administered by the police cannot get front-page and headline news treatment (the newspapers would be much larger and the news much longer). Neither am I against the treatment that this matter involving Dr. Ford has been given.

But, if the allegations against this particular policeman are true, then long before Dr. Ford left the KPH with more bandages showing on his body than skin, rehearsals had been ongoing without much repercussions until a certain level of professionalism had been achieved.

And I ask, what about the other 19 cases? Wasn't even one of them a marker to say we need to take a look at this person's behaviour? Or, in cases where persons not as prominent as Ford are allegedly whupped by the police, where is the level of interest that would require such a track record be dug up and made public?

It is, after all, a common enough approach by those on the right stripe of the law, for previous infractions and allegations to be made public when push comes to shove comes to gunshot (the alleged gunman named 'Cheese Tricks' who was recently killed was afterwards publicly linked to a triple murder near the Denham Town Police Station).

The difference, of course, is who it has happened to. Dr. Ford qualifies as a person, a 'smaddy', because he is a professional, he is prominent, he has a political history and, by all accounts, he has been a philanthropist. But as many have pointed out before me and many will after, things that horrify us as a nation when they happen to the 'smaddies' among us are often common occurrences for the 'nobaddies'. The horrible beating that Dr. Ford was subjected to did not happen in isolation.

Previous chances

There were, allegedly, potentially 19 previous chances to get the business of beating right for one of the four policemen who allegedly had a go at a man who would be able to stand in the senior citizens line at the bank.

People who work in media come from the society, just like the police. The writers, the editors, those who give the details on a story and those who decide when and how it should be aired respectively, are subject to the same standards of considering a person 'smaddy' as everyone else, based on their socialisation. I am afraid that, in cases where bad things that are relatively common occurrences happen to prominent people and are given extensive coverage, 'mediacrity' sets in, reinforcing the different standards of treatment that are allowed to be meted out to persons in the society.

And, for the many who are not 'a-Forded' at least the dignity of public outrage, it is the business end of brutality as usual.