Who’s Really to Blame for Our Police Farce?

How quickly we forget. Then again perhaps I should be underscoring instead our ability to remember only when convenient—not to mention the established price to be paid by those who simply cannot remember the past. On Monday caller after declared heartbroken caller sobbed on the shoulders of accommodating talk-radio presenters over Saint Lucia’s recent loss of her innocence, to the extent that violent crime was now commonplace even in communities populated mainly by blood relatives. This time around the tearful hyperbole was inspired by last Saturday’s 3 a.m. fatal shooting of a 66-year-old male by masked individuals outside a late-night watering hole. 

“Who could’ve imagined such a thing happening in Micoud?” a discombobulated caller to Newsspin asked on Monday. The way he spoke the name of the village reminded me of the Garden of Eden before the world’s most famous serpent locked eyes on a naked Eve. Obviously the Newsspin caller had long forgotten the middle of the night murderous machete attack on an elderly Micoud couple just over a year ago. By their own accounts this particular incident had also reduced total strangers to tears. It actually arrested—for a full three days!—the attention of our notoriously fickle news editors, until they were seduced by another excitement centered, if memory serves, on the uniquely perverse private proclivities of a third-rate politician. To date there has been no resolution of the Desruisseaux incident, by which I mean to say no one has been arrested or charged with the heinous attack on Elias and Muriel Louisy in the early hours of May 26, 2018. Admittedly, there have been no special demands on law enforcement to bring those responsible to justice.  

Then there was the obviously forgettable rape and sodomy of a 97-year-old great-granny in 2015, yes, again in Micoud. Not that I mean to imply something demonic is at work there. The irreducible truth is that it’s folly to believe beautiful and safe are synonymous. Few crimes have been resolved here that were not committed in full view of the police and other witnesses. It’s been close to 50 years since a local murder was solved thanks to the efforts of committed police officers.

Early on a June morning in 1971 the charred remains of John Etherington and his wife Marjorie were recovered amidst the smoking debris of their Goodlands home, minutes away from the Castries fire station. By the time the allegedly misdirected firemen arrived at the scene the residence had been totally consumed.    

A Scotsman, Etherington had been the general manager of Geest Windward Islands Estates. His wife was a white Barbados native. Within hours of the grisly discovery the government of the day, led by Premier John Compton, had imported Scotland Yard personnel to take charge of a related investigation. Meanwhile notices were posted all over the island offering a large cash reward for information leading to the conviction of the Etheringtons’ killer or killers. There could be no denying the government’s determination to settle the case quickly—which many attributed to the status of the victims, their race and their connection with the hand that fed Saint Lucia’s economy: John van Geest, the individual officially credited at every opportunity with the success of the island’s banana industry. It didn’t hurt the government’s efforts that the publisher of the Voice newspaper was also the chairman of Geest Industries, as committed as the premier to a quick solution of the Etherington mystery.  

The government need not have requested the Yard’s assistance. Finally it was the excellent work of a long-time member of the local CID that resulted in the arrest and successful prosecution of three small-time thieves, one with no recorded date of birth. Superintendent Collis Barrow had recovered from the ashes of the burned-out Etherington residence a piece of glass that under forensic examination yielded fingerprints that matched samples on the police files. The rest is history, parts flattering of Saint Lucians, parts not. The detailed story is told in my book It’ll Be Alright In The Morning, now in its seventh or eighth printing, still worth a read in our current circumstances. And just in case you may be wondering, dear reader, we had no crime lab at the time of the Etherington murders. What we had, albeit grossly unappreciated, were dedicated officers of the law. 

It is worth adding that the lawyers carefully chosen by the state to defend the accused had little experience in criminal law. Something else they had in common: all were members of the incumbent party. On the other hand, there was the state-imported forensic expert from the UK, described by visiting foreign journalists in their dispatches as “one of the world’s best.” He had absolutely no difficulty convincing the good Catholics on the jury that the Etheringtons were still alive when their home was set ablaze—and that the remorseless accused scumbags in the dock had battered and raped Marjorie Etherington before setting her gasoline-soaked body afire. Following the predictable guilty verdicts, the men from the Yard were generous in their praise of the local police officer who had discovered the undeniable clue at the crime scene.  

But back to Tuesday’s Newsspin. One caller identified himself as a Saint Lucian living in Canada. He told a riveting tale: “I listened intently to your earlier calls by the police officers, one current, one former, appealing to the people and trying to put blame on them. Here’s a situation that happened just last week. There’s a crime spree in Bexon and Sarrot right now. Somebody just got killed. Three nights in a row residents in the Bexon area were robbed. The people knew the [perpetrators] they lived close to them. They identified their hair, their shoes, their clothes, their voice, everything to the police. The people even did their own investigation. They talked with their neighbours. They got a vehicle number, which I also have. It leaves between one and 1:30 every morning and comes back 4:30 to 5 o’clock every morning. They gave the police that information. When they went to the police, a lady had been robbed at four-something in the morning. Another woman was robbed about an hour before. They went down to the police station between 5:00am and 8:00am. Three people made three different reports at the police station. The police told them, ‘We have no vehicles and no resources at this time to go up there and see about it.’ The people turned back and three days in a row they’ve been going to different police officers; morning, afternoon, this police officer is not there, that person is not there, we don’t have resources, we don’t have vehicles. 

“The people gave the police the vehicle number, names, where they work. I called one of the alleged thieves and spoke with him. That’s to prove that the people gave good intelligence. One of the people even suggested, ‘If you think I’m lying, why don’t you come, park a vehicle somewhere, do surveillance, hide, and watch the vehicle leave at 1:30, 2 o’clock in the morning.’ That’s a citizen, advising the police what to do. That’s how bad it’s gotten. And the police never did it. Until yesterday it was not done. People are cooperating with the police, giving them information, but it’s not acted upon. What somebody has said is he will never tell the police anything again, ‘because now the people know I told the police; I went to the police for them. They might come after me.’

Somebody else said: ‘As Christmas gets near, it’s going to get worse.’ These thieves believe they can act with impunity.  I heard the police officer say the people don’t cooperate, when just this past week they’ve been coming to your station; people have been clamouring at you for you to come and help them; and they’ve given you more information than you might’ve gathered on your own.

“So I agree with Rick [Wayne] when he says ‘same thing, different day.’  The primary responsibility of any government is the security of its people. Without security you have nothing. You need a secure country. That’s why countries have armies, a military, to safeguard people and make sure they’re safe in their own homes. As a kid in Saint Lucia, I was able to walk from Castries to Bexon, from Castries to Babonneau, Babonneau to . . . anytime day or night, one or two o’clock in the morning. Park anywhere; do anything. Now people are in their homes, with burglar bars and locks and they cannot, they cannot get out of their homes at certain times of the night. We live in an armed camp and the thieves are winning. And we need the police to get up and do their job. We need the government of Saint Lucia to provide the security the people need. Don’t just blame the police. It’s a governmental thing, too. Hold the government responsible. It starts with the Prime Minister and the Minister of National Security, the Attorney General: They’re all being paid. They all have their jobs to do. They all took an oath to safeguard the people of Saint Lucia.”

I desperately want to believe all the caller from Canada shared with Newsspin. As credible as he sounded, however, it’s a safe bet most listeners had no idea how close he is to the complaints he cited. In any case, I dare to say it’s not that the government is ignoring the crime situation. The problem lies in the fact that it is doing only what other administrations have done before, to little avail, whenever there’s an upsurge in crime: provide more police vehicles, idly threaten unknown criminals, enact draconian legislation destined not to be implemented or, if implemented, guaranteed to generate politician versus politician conflict—and greater polarization of their respective supporters.  

In short, the same failed remedies are administered over and over while hoping in vain for miraculous results. It is no secret that the people, even those who report criminal activity, do not trust the police. And not without good reason. But then how can a largely undertrained, under-equipped, demoralized, under-manned, widely distrusted force of about 1,340 effectively protect and serve a population of 180,000—one cop to every 134 citizens—many of whom are themselves career criminals or accomplices? Often we hear critics stating with palpable self-assuredness that the problem with our police force is “poor leadership.” I suggest it might be more useful when assessing our leaders to know the difference between de jure and de facto!