An outspoken Caribbean policeman has chosen to tackle what he believes to be corrupt practices by the political administration in his country. Are there lessons to be learnt by professional Police Forces in the rest of the Caribbean
Earlier this year, it took an Assistant Commissioner of Police to make public his views on instances of corrupt and unprofessional conduct in the Guyana Police Force (GPF). His outburst may not have taken the public entirely by surprise. Paul Slowe had, over the years, earned a reputation as an efficient policeman and, uniquely, as a police officer who was not afraid to confront the authorities over what he perceived to be wrongdoings in the GPF. Some years earlier he had clashed openly with former Home Affairs Minister Ronald Gajraj over a decision that he had made to impound a firearm in a case involving a seemingly well-connected citizen and the manner in which he had acquitted himself had won him public applause but had not gone down well with the authorities. Paul Slowe’s final salvo came on the eve of his retirement and whatever consequences the authorities may have been contemplating for his outburst, he had, thoughtfully, saved his most pointed criticisms of the police force for last.
There are, perhaps, only a few small comparisons between the now retired Assistant Commissioner of Police and Sergeant Raymond Wilson, a 38 year-old twenty-year veteran police officer who, earlier this month, took a swipe not at government as a whole, publicly charging “blatant” official corruption in the handling of the arrest and eventually extradition to the United States of a notorious drug lord. The most significant between Slowe and Wilson is that the latter is not a Guyanese policeman. He is member of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) and the Chairman of the Jamaica Police Federation. (JPF)
What is immediately apparent about the JPF is that it provides militant representation for the junior ranks of the Jamaica Constabulary in matters pertaining to their conditions of service. There is no parallel organization serving the interests of Guyanese policemen. Perhaps more significantly, the JPF have, over time, become the nemesis of the political administration in Jamaica, irrespective of the political party in office.
Sergeant Wilson’s outspokenness has gotten him into trouble with both People’s National Party (PNP) and Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) administrations. At the May 2007 Sixty Fourth Conference of the Federation he outraged the administration by charging that some police officers were “deploying police personnel to private commercial events to work for free,” and that those officers were “closely affiliated with security companies which are being paid millions to work at the said event,” Wilson told the conference that the practice of using high office “to deploy people under the circumstances explained is one of the biggest forms of corruption.If we are going to weed out corruption, weed out the grass eaters and the meat eaters,” he quipped.
His most recent clash with authority, however, could prove costly for the outspoken sergeant. The Inspectorate Branch of the police have commenced a probe into Wilson’s controversial address at the September 1 Sixty Seventh Annual Conference of the JPF during which he accused the incumbent political administration of “blatant” corruption in the handling of the extradition to the United States of alleged drug lord Christopher “Dudus” Coke. He went further, demanding that the authorities pay more attention to issues like a pay rise for the 6,000-odd Jamaican policemen and, according to reports from Kingston, even questioned the administration’s commitment to fighting crime. A determination will now have to be made as to whether what is being interpreted in some quarters as a political attack on the government constituted a transgression of any of the JCF’s rules.
In commenting publicly and disparagingly on an issue which has already caused the political administration of Prime Minister Bruce Golding considerable domestic and international embarrassment – though other CARICOM governments have remained conspicuously quiet on the matter – Wilson has, not for the first time, opted to lock horns with the heaviest of the country’s political heavyweights.
Seemingly unmindful of official consequences, Wilson pilloried the government of Prime Minister Bruce Golding for its preparedness to shell out millions of dollars to an American law firm, in a bid to prevent the extradition of the man believed by Washington to be the region’s most notorious drug lord. Wilson, it is believed, was referring to the JLP’s link with Los Angeles-based law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, which it hired to lobby on its behalf in the extradition case of west Kingston enforcer Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke……… whose family has strong ties to the JLP,” according to Gleaner writer Howard Campbell.
If the pronouncements of Sergeant Wilson may have attracted little attention in Guyana or elsewhere in the Caribbean for that matter, they strike a resonant chord with the situation in some other Caribbean territories where governments and government officials have been accused of having links with organized crime. Few Guyanese policemen, for example, who trouble themselves to study Wilson’s outburst carefully would miss the differences between the culture of robust outspokenness that characterizes the JPF and the complete moderation of the local Police Federation. Paul Slowe’s remarks about the state of the Guyana Police Force amounted to an individual declaration by a single police officer.
Moreover, the impact of what Slowe had to say passed quickly in the light of his immediate retirement thereafter and the absence of any kind of public comment on what he had to say by his professional colleagues. Wilson’s remarks are a different kettle of fish. They were made in his capacity as head of a police organization and, it seems, with the backing of many of the policemen represented by the organization.
His remarks too have already attracted political attention having been deemed by the General Secretary of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Karl Samuda “Ill-advised and irresponsible.” Another JPL Member of Parliament, Ernie Smith, had demanded the police Sergeant’s resignation.
Comparisons with the GPF are tempting. The local police force has, over the years, maintained a loyalty to the
government of the day even to the extent of becoming implicated in the notorious “death squad” allegations made against the serving political administration. Moreover, neither the local Police Federation nor officers of the Force have come even close to publicly ventilating issues pertaining to policemen’s pay or to the well-known operational and resource-related hindrances to crime fighting. Not so, it seems, the JCF. Smith has charged that Wilson’s remarks were made in pursuit of a political career with the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) “a swipe,” Campbell says, at former Police Commissioner Lucius Thomas, who is now a full-fledged PNP politician.
Wilson, from all reports, has been a model policeman who joined the JCF as an 18-year-old in 1990, shortly after leaving secondary school and was elected Chairman of the JCF as a corporal in 2004. Campbell writes that the unyielding police officer’s tenure has not been short of incident. “During heated wage negotiations with the then PNP government in 2005, members of the federation blocked Finance Minister Dr Omar Davies’ path to his office as he arrived for work…….Wilson has been a vocal critic of local human rights groups, describing them as anti-police. Last October, he was in hot water after challenging a statement by Assistant Commissioner of Police Les Green that some policemen killed in the line of duty were corrupt. Wilson said Green should provide proof, and if not, resign.”
“I doubt that any policeman, far less a Sergeant can get away with that here,” a local police officer says. “Obviously the JPF has the backing of the junior ranks and is not afraid to talk back to government. We do things differently here.” Asked to comment on possible comparisons between Wilson and Slowe the officer responded that as far as he was concerned there were none. “Mr. Slowe was an individual police officer and a senior officer, at that. Wilson was speaking for an organization that supports him. I have to say too that it seems like there is a lot of politics in the Jamaica situation.”
Interestingly, it appears that Sergeant Wilson may have some measure of support even among higher-ranking officers of the JCF. According to Campbell, “Superintendent Michael James, head of the Police Officers’ Association, has defended the sergeant’s right to speak on behalf of his members.”
Wilson’s future is uncertain. At the conclusion of the probe — which will determine whether he may have breached the Constabulary Force Act or the Constabulary’s Force Order – he will face what is known as a Court of Enquiry to determine innocence or guilt. If he is found guilty he could face one or more penalties.
Not surprisingly, the enquiry has become the subject of controversy in Jamaica with Sergeant Wilson’s supporters regarding it as being politically motivated. On the other hand, the thoroughly embarrassed Jamaican political establishment, having already been badly bruised by the “Dudus” Coke case appear to be baying for blood though the Goulding administration cannot afford to be unmindful of a possible backlash from rank-and-file Jamaican policemen known for a much greater measure of militancy elsewhere in the region. “Here (in Guyana) his punishment would have come more quickly and no one, except his family, would lose any sleep over it,” quipped a junior rank serving at a Georgetown police station.
While ruling JLP Deputy General Secretary Senator Ken Meadows asserts that Wilson’s pronouncements “severely strained the hallowed principle in the tradition of Jamaica’s democracy of separating politics from a neutral civil service; and of requiring that civil servants (moreso the police) refrain from active, public political participation, even through pronouncements,” the question that arises is whether the police ought to turn its back on what it perceives to be acts of lawlessness and corrupt practices in cases where those transgressions are located in the pursuits of the political directorate.
Jamaica is not the only Caribbean territory in which the men and women whose task it is to serve and protect the citizenry rather than to conceal what appears to be mounting evidence of wrongdoings by Caribbean governments and political leaders.
