How Much Longer Before We Bury Our Police Corpse?

Several weeks ago I received via WhatsApp an image of a front page of the long defunct Crusader newspaper, in its final days owned and edited by the late George Odlum. An accompanying note requested I read the featured story: “I think you’ll find it interesting.” And so I started reading. First the headline: Police Persecution of Rastas Unfair! Struck by the newspaper’s use of the word persecution when it seemed at first sight that prosecution might’ve been more appropriate, I read on: “Straight off the bat let’s set a few things straight: I stand on the side of law and order. I acknowledge the Royal St. Lucia Police Force is an overworked body with a particularly difficult mission.

I empathize with officers who sometimes must confront armed and hostile individuals. I sympathize with our dedicated representatives of the law who are regularly subjected to public abuse, unfair criticism, insults and curses that would more usefully be aimed at others more deserving. If there’s one thing the Royal St. Lucia Police Force desperately needs right now, other than a hefty pay rise, it’s a kind word or a small demonstration of public appreciation.” 

It was at this point that my curiosity forced me to scroll back to the top of the page, to check the article’s publication date: September 10, 1977. I scrolled down again, to the second paragraph: “It seems a radio station has launched a propaganda campaign designed to persuade St. Lucians to rat on friends and enemies suspected of growing, pushing or smoking marijuana. I’m not against the police requesting community assistance in their fight against crime generally, but this campaign seems aimed at a particular group: Rastafarians.

“Recently a police superintendent told the Voice he had seen no good reason why a Rastaman and his girlfriend were arrested during a pre-dawn police raid at Morne Gimie, on suspicion of cultivating marijuana. ‘That won’t solve the Rasta problem!’ he said. The ignorance demonstrated by our leaders in their treatment of Rastafarians is appalling. There is much corruption in high places. Our Premier is well aware of the rampant corruption involving police officers but does nothing about that . . . A couple years ago a young boy was shot in the mouth. The Premier announced in the House that he had ordered a special investigation. The Premier lied. There has been no such investigation; the Premier never ordered one. And anyway, when did it become the Premier’s job to order police investigations . . .”

Only after I’d read the article in full did I wonder about its author’s identity. With almost childish anticipation I scrolled up one more time, my mind racing. I speak nothing but truth (okay, truth slightly exaggerated!) when I say that had the writer turned out to be, say, Earl Bousquet, Guy Ellis or Brother George—the day’s literary lions—I don’t know how I might’ve reacted. What a relief it was to read “by Rick Wayne.” 

Hot damn! After all my years writing here and elsewhere, you’d think I had by now outgrown such puerile titillations. Unabashedly I say, thank goodness I’ve not—and here’s hoping I never will. Keep in mind the date of the Crusader publication: September 1977. I was then still resident in California. Conceivably I had penned the piece while vacationing here. Reading it again after all this time delivered a kick in the head reminder of how little had changed here in four decades; at any rate, for the better. Not the popular perception of our elected parliamentarians, and certainly not our relationship with the ostensible sole protectors of our lives and property. At the time I gratefully received the ancient document (it must’ve affected the sender as it had me) the “hot button topic” centered on the fatal police shooting of Arnold Joseph, a 17-year-old Entrepot school student.    

Very much on the public mind at the time of the incident was Kimberly De Leon, a mother of two young children. She was killed by a bullet to her head as she prepared for bed on an October evening in 2018. By his own unchallenged account her husband, a police officer, was not at home when Kimberly was shot. Just hours after he discovered his wife’s body, police personnel at a press conference declared him a person of interest, for more than one stated reason. 

Meanwhile, CID officers had processed the same “person of interest” and declared him clean and free to return to his home, now a crime scene. He later applied for, and was granted leave, presumably on compassionate grounds. He recently returned to work but not to his regular place at the Criminal Investigations Department. He has been assigned to the writs section, to a position way below his official status. Since Kimberly’s death the police have issued contradictory statements about samples taken from the crime scene, as well as the whereabouts of files related to the case.

We return now to the death of young Arnold Joseph, the star Entrepot student. The initial police word on the matter: “On Wednesday, 22 May 2019, about 10.30 p.m., officers attached to the Special Services Unit, while on mobile patrol received information regarding a suspicious motor vehicle at Reclamation Grounds, Castries. The responding officers made attempts to stop a white Mitsubishi Lancer, registration number PE3191 but to no avail. The motor vehicle in question failed to stop, venturing through one-way streets about the city, contravening traffic regulations. During an attempt to apprehend the individuals, one of the individuals was fatally shot while a second was non-fatally injured. A third male was arrested without injury. One 9mm firearm was recovered by the officers from the said individuals.”

It emerged that the driver of the “suspicious motor vehicle” had been charged with several traffic violations, none related to a firearm. At another press conference last Thursday the police seemed to change their story. Now they claimed the 9mm had been found “en-route with reference to where the incident occurred in the city. It was recovered outside the vehicle on the route to where the incident occurred in terms of the case.”

While in the first instance the police claimed the gun was recovered “by officers from the said individuals,” now they corrected themselves. They said the weapon was not found by the officers involved in the chase that turned deadly. It was recovered by “a crime unit that covers all crime scenes and they would’ve been the one to have recovered the firearm.”

At their most recent press meeting the police also explained why no one had been charged in relation to the recovered firearm: investigations were on-going, “more charges could follow.” In the meantime they strongly denied having said the occupants of the suspicious vehicle had shot at them. 

Last week’s press conference left much room for speculation, including: What made the white Mitsubishi a “suspicious motor vehicle” in the first place? Why did the police shooters target it, at the risk of hurting uninvolved pedestrians—especially when they denied their own lives were in imminent danger? Who actually shot the young student and his fellow passenger? What happened when the police “attempted
to apprehend” the occupants of the car that required the police to fire their weapons? Were the occupants armed? Why was there a need to undertake a search for a firearm “at the crime scene?” What crime scene? What crime? 

If their recent press conferences are any indicator of how police investigations are conducted, then small wonder some 500 cold cases remain to be resolved. In both the Kimberly De Leon and the Arnold Joseph incidents it’s clear the right hand of the police has no clue what the left is up to. 

Meanwhile, the widow Margaret Pratt, the relatives of Ollie Gobart and Jane Sinson, Bob Hathaway and others with overseas connections continue their campaigns for justice, with little good to say about the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force.

Kenny Anthony’s widely publicized 2013-15 speeches in relation to IMPACS, including his revelations about guns planted at crime scenes while a police commissioner “turned a blind eye,” have further damaged the reputation of our only security force—already indelibly stained with the blood of Yamaha, Charlie Boo, Terry James and others suspiciously dispatched by the police. 

Allen Chastanet promised at election time to do better than his immediate predecessor. Obviously, that is not nearly enough. The RSLPF is widely perceived as uncaring, corrupt, incompetent, a law unto itself, growing increasingly dangerous. It is also undermanned, under-trained, depressed, frustrated, with seemingly nowhere to turn. If this sorry situation is not urgently addressed by the day’s government—by which I mean our elected parliamentarians on both sides of the House—the consequences will be catastrophic. 

Already the writing is on the wall!