IMPACS Cobwebbed While The Nation Bleeds!

[dropcap]A[/dropcap][dropcap][/dropcap] concerned citizen called a local radio program this week with a national complaint that long before the majority of today’s teenagers were born had been crying out for resolution. This was how he addressed Newsspin’s Timothy Poleon: “I am very concerned about the problem of home invasion in our country.” He referenced an elderly couple whose Desruisseaux residence had recently been invaded by individuals widely believed to be blood relatives. Alerted by the 71-year-old woman’s piercing cries, concerned neighbors discovered her bleeding from terrible machete wounds outside her doorway, barely alive. Her 74-year-old husband was not as lucky. He had succumbed to vicious blows to his head and other parts of his body. The attack, allegedly related to a long-running dispute, had taken place in broad daylight.   

“All you ever hear from the police is that they are investigating,” said Poleon’s caller, his volume indicative of his frustrations. “Investigating what? They never have anything to say about how these investigations are going. The Desruisseaux couple’s relatives have received no useful word from them.”

He said the police station nearest the scene of the crime normally shut down after six o’clock, “as if it were a shoe store or something.” As for desperate calls to headquarters in Castries, Poleon’s caller suggested it would be easier to get the governor general on the line than to contact a helpful policeman after regular business hours. Another Newsspin caller, hell-bent on defending the police (or the government!) ignored the expressed concerns: that defenseless people in their homes, including the elderly, were regularly attacked at all hours, most of the time without a consequent arrest, and even when a suspect is taken into custody he is within a few hours set free, “for lack of evidence.”

It seemed the second caller’s sole purpose was to say how unfair it was on the police when people attacked rather than appreciated their efforts. He said the police were “doing their best in their circumstances”—an observation that the program’s host enthusiastically supported, if only to provoke more listener reaction.

The undeniable truth is that “doing their best in their circumstances” is just another local euphemism for sub-standard. There has hardly been a time when the police were adequately equipped to perform their vital role as protectors of our lives and property, and here I speak both of quality manpower and modern equipment. I cannot recall a time when there was not a shortage of magistrates and judges, or when they did not have just cause to complain about their work environment. Our justice system has for too long suffered at the hands of uncaring successive governments that evidently never quite understood a country without a dedicated and well-trained police force free of political interference is a disaster waiting to happen. Which is not to say the Philistines are not already upon us. Certainly the incessant calls for justice, the scores of unresolved murders, rapes, choppings and other serious crimes almost daily committed, often in our “Simply Beautiful” sunlight, are unchallengeable proof of that. And to think we brought this mess down on our own heads. Yes, we the “doing the best they can” enablers.

The inescapable truth is that doing “the best they can” often does not begin to be good enough. Sometimes the best you can do is get the hell out and make room for others committed to doing in the general interest what must be done. Otherwise, we perish. Conscious enablers as well as enablers by our silent endorsement of mediocrity. Let us admit crime in Saint Lucia had already reached intolerable levels from as far back as the early 90s. Violent crime, particularly. Ironically, the police themselves may have contributed the introduction of illegal firearms to the civilian population, by now a major headache. There was a time when our uniformed protectors were without question free to shoot unarmed escapees from our particularly porous prison on Bridge Street, before it was relocated and misnamed Bordelais Rehabilitation Facility.

I have written for this newspaper countless accounts about inmates who had bargained with corrupt officials for a few hours of freedom. When they failed to keep their promise to return at an agreed time, the desperate prison wardens would report them missing to the Special Services Unit. It mattered not that all indications suggested the inmates had not broken out of their cells; neither did anyone see the need for follow-up investigations after the escapees had been returned, usually with bullet-riddled limbs that often required amputation.

Too often Rastamen, starting in the late 80s, were viciously abused by police officers, mainly because of their appearance. Rastas were also considered synonymous with not only the verboten herb but also with crime generally. They were soft targets for the police. If they claimed a Rastaman was responsible for a public disturbance, a burglary, a murder, many in authority were disinclined to waste taxpayers’ money on due process for the suspect, let alone a vermin-infested 2×2 cell with free meals.

Terry James, Corbeau, Yamaha were all famously dispatched without argument. But cornered rats have been known to take on seemingly impossible odds. Slowly but surely abused citizens began to arm themselves—sometimes with guns forcefully lifted from officers, sometimes peacefully acquired from crooked cops in exchange for money or drugs. In one unforgettable instance related to what was described as “the biggest cocaine bust in our history,” two loaded Magnum pistols were confiscated by the police and inadvertently placed on display with other exhibits from the record raid. Only much later did the police acknowledge what the STAR had published about the guns was true: originally the firearms had been issued to the police and had never been reported missing.

Thankfully, even though the police shootings continued unabated, less than four officers were shot between the 80s and the present time—the most easily recalled victim being Superintendent Alphonse. He was gunned down in 1979 as he sat with friends at a late-night bar, with a police weapon. I might also add that there was much evidence that Alphonse may have been the casualty of a conspiracy related to police promotions. In all events, by the time an inquest got underway his alleged shooter had been taken out by an SSU squad as, unarmed, he took refuge at an unoccupied Hospital Road address. Dead men tell no tales. Even inquest reports can sometimes prove otiose—as 18-year-old Terry James, Corbeau and Yamaha would’ve attested given the opportunity!

And so we come to the matter of IMPACS that may have driven the final nail in the coffins of the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force and our long broken justice system. According to the prime minister Kenny Anthony in 2013, reading from a report, in 2010-11 a number of “citizens deemed to be criminal” had been fatally shot by cops in possession of “a death list.” Moreover, that the police commissioner at the time had turned a blind eye to the alleged illegal activities. The prime minister’s investigators had determined that weapons retrieved at the scenes of the police shootings had been planted. The U.S. State Department entered the picture on the basis of a human rights treaty to which Saint Lucia is a signatory, and demanded an investigation and credible prosecution of the report submitted by a group of Jamaican officers attached to IMPACS, never mind that local inquests had cleared suspects of wrongdoing. Kenny Anthony informed the nation via his televised address that the Americans had no faith in the coroner’s court, therefore his government would have to take “corrective steps” before much needed economic and other assistance under the Leahy Law would again become available.

The E.U. has also demanded a credible judicial resolution to the “gross violation of human rights” allegedly committed by the police, evidently to no avail. Police credibility continues to plummet under the Allen Chastanet government. There has been no official word on the immediate future of the IMPACS report but usually reliable sources say new investigations are underway, albeit very quietly.

Meanwhile the people bleed!