Taking a hit

“One of these days when u hear a voice say come who you gonna run to. You gonna run to the rock for rescue but there will be no rock…” from UB40: Johnny Too Bad. Music and lyrics by Bexford/Baily/Winston/Crooks.

I still have the text lodged in my phone. This syndicated chain letter of a text, dripping with all the conviction of a blockbuster movie script where the protagonist finally gets confirmation that his long standing conspiracy theory was right. I mean, it felt like the panic sigh of that character when he realizes that the string of poorly covered events which had snuck by the attention of the average six-thirty television viewer, and not him, was true; despite the nagging suppression by his own paranoia and eccentricity.

Yes, the average Belizean believes that the allegations packed into the twenty-three word text message is not far from the truth. As one old lady sitting on an upside down pig-tail bucket confidently theorized, “Daawlin, deh have good cop and bad cops, jus like how deh have good piple and bad piple. Wan day di lee bwai dehn deh pan yuh gate mouth di smoke di weed, next ting deh di step inna blue and kahki.” 

Police murders boy?

The “bogieman under the bed” cry that there is a band of Police assassins who execute civilians has been swirling around for years. Whether this sect of officers is acting under the sanction and instruction of the big man “dehn” or whether they are an uncoordinated rogue group who just “trip out” without notice, is anyone’s guess. But right now, seriously, this thing is quacking like a duck and walking like a duck.

 Normally, the name called is some notorious gangbanger, the witnesses are nowhere to be found or the “graveyard of bones” too remote.  But every so often, “the bag buss” in plain view and even the most gullible law-abiding-citizen has to scratch his head. 

Who could forget reports by the hovering media vultures of the Southside community sorrows? I remember with revulsion when the salivating news station production team poured water onto the splatter of marrow on the concrete side walk of Euphrates Avenue, to get the perfect shot as Jules did his trademark, voice over: “21-year-old Leslie Rogers Jr. was a student at St. John’s College Sixth Form and worked in the tourism industry but on Saturday night, this pool of blood on the Euphrates Avenue sidewalk was the only memory left of him after he was shot by police.”.

 That was as far back as Valentine’s Day of 2005. But in the past two weeks there have been at least three questionable killings of unarmed civilians by police officers. Now, there is a point in time when a conspiracy theory matures into undisguisable fact. Maybe that point will be after the gun smoke and confusion of the Chris Galvez murder is fanned away by the defiance of Yolanda Schakron. Or maybe someone will actually listen to the confessions of this Police Force under the UDP command. Did no one hear the “fool di talk but no fool di listen” interview of “Stiletto” in the police slaying of a Jamaican, O’Neil Jones?  Freudian slip there, for the Police apologist? That Lords Bank police shooting of a civilian in the back, drunkenly claimed headlines  five years to the day after the  Rogers killing –  almost as if ordained for the sacrifice of some ritualistic police cult.

Now with the muscle of a deacon’s credentials, the amplification of a peeved Adventist Church and the troubling admission by the ComPol of policemen carrying ski masks, we are able to pull the brakes on this train and question what in UDP-hell is going on.

Really, this kind of talk is more far more plausible theory for our neighboring republics either sixty eight miles west of Dangriga or a hundred and seventy-four miles north of Barranco. But Belize is too small, too volatile and too naïve for this kind of allegation.

I refuse to believe that the top brass of the Police Force is in on this. Nope. No way.  Many voices in the swell of critics of the Police Force have been calling for a hit on Papa Jeff’s employment, saying that he must know what is going on and if he doesn’t know, he should be forced to resign, reform or be removed.  Ah???…but where is the Ombudsman in all this? Is she playing solitaire after she sent the telegram to Belize Health Care Partners? We all know that we cannot wait for Deanno to do anything. Spare us the placebo and expense of another Commission of Inquiry, we don’t want to hear about any more spoilt fish, when we should have been talking about pills taken home by a secretary.

The Report on Crooks, sorry, I mean, Crooks Report, needs to be implemented with some political honesty and will.  We don’t want to end up with a situation like Jamaica where international human rights organizations are blowing the whistle on a problem which is “outta ada”.

After trying to hitch up a decaying socio-economic problem with crime which was spurred on by reckless political desperation, Jamaica saw the reign of notorious super cops like Renato Adams and “Trinity”. Today Jamaica is the “dancehall king” of police violence. According to an Amnesty International report entitled, Jamaica: Killings and Violence by Police: How many more victims?: “Jamaica has one of the highest per capita rates of lethal police shootings in the world on average 140 people per year have been shot and killed by the police in the last decade…”

A human rights group in that country known as Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) complained: “that almost all investigations and prosecutions of fatal police shootings are perfunctory, inadequate and unsatisfactory and do not meet international standards.” This surely is the complaint of the one eye man, who has not traveled to the land of the blind. If they think their investigations are poor, check wid Belize, my yute.

In a paper presented to the Inter American Commission on Human Rights called Pattern of Impunity: A Report on Jamaica’s Investigation and Prosecution of Deaths at the hands of agents of the State,  JFJ noted: “  In Jamaica there is a clear pattern of police impunity for killings of civilians due to a combination of factors including: systematically poor investigative procedures; weaknesses of oversight bodies and mechanisms; failure to protect witnesses; delays and weaknesses in the processes of the courts; weaknesses and lack of will in the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions; and lack of political will to correct the problem.  By improperly investigating and prosecuting fatal police shootings Jamaican authorities are not only undermining the trust relationship that exists between a government and its people but also the internationally guaranteed fundamental right to life.” Boss, if you ask me, you can take out all the references to Jamaica and insert Belize and not even Johnny Cochran could stop the glove from fitting.

As I read further, I realized what our government is deliberately doing wrong too: “[it] has failed to properly investigate police shootings on several systemic levels, including: A failure to preserve the crime scene and collect forensic evidence; A failure to protect witnesses of police shootings against intimidation and harassment, (at times the Police themselves are the perpetrators of the harassment and intimidation); and a failure to grant legislative support and resources to an independent investigative body to oversee the investigation of police shootings. Furthermore, there has been a failure on [their] part to provide: A speedy and efficient remedy to victims’ families in terms of both the investigation (including adequate autopsy and post-mortem procedures) and the judicial proceedings.  This failure includes a failure to prosecute police officials for the killing of civilians, despite overwhelming evidence.” Bam si deh.

Now, what makes it worse in Belize is that this is a high tech problem that needs the proper support, finances and deliberation. It is a crime that this is even a topic of discussion in Belize. It is a flagrant act of national terrorism because in Belize, the term “police intelligence” is an oxymoron. We in Belize depend on community policing. We ain’t got nothing else. Now, if the public mistrusts the police and sees them as a state mercenary group, our slipping grip on democracy will come officially crashing down into the civil unrest of vigilante justice and anarchy.

Who will arrest the despots and tyrants if they are wearing khaki?

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