by Colin Hyde
I’m pretty sure Mr. Wilfred Elrington was the one who was bold enough to suggest that the ComPol shud be from a foreign country, and for what it’s worth, I endorsed that position. We have a serious violence problem, and nothing we have done thus far has been sufficient. Sure, there are all kinds of factors that create the environment for crime. Sure we have some excuses to be a violent nation. That doesn’t mean we should tolerate violence. We shouldn’t and cannot.
Because every life is precious, the outgoing ComPol and his minister deserve some points for bringing down the number of murders to double digits. In El Salvador, they brought down the number of murders so substantially that they are now the safest country in our hemisphere. Can you appreciate walking the streets late at night with no fear? Can you see business folk opening up their businesses at night again? We’ve had some revamped and new initiatives, but they are not the biggest story behind us getting murders below a hundred. The greatest part of our little “success” is owed to the El Salvador solution, the SOE. Our security forces can’t handle things without the threat of dropping that hammer, or actually dropping it. Again, what we have achieved is far from sufficient.
I don’t know either of the guys up for the ComPol post. It’s possible that both are as saintly as it is possible to be in a country with so much endemic mischief. Whoa there, I am not about blaming any particular ComPol for our dismal state. The fact is that year after year, after decades of erosion, the people don’t trust the police. And in security, information is king. The security department must regain the confidence of the people.
I have always wondered how a young police officer handles the hypocritical weed law. I bet you cannot find one officer in this country who doesn’t have a close relative who smokes that herb. The sensible, conscientious ones turn a blind eye. You know that makes them complicit in the smoking crime. That weed law is ridiculous, and very damaging to our integrity. I could go on and on, belabor this. I think better we move on.
I expect our top officers would be insulted if we went da foreign, to Canada, the UK, or Barbados for a ComPol. There will be the usual cries that we are disrespecting our nationhood. I will just say that sometimes we have to step back so we can go forward. Ten murders a year in a country with 400,000 is too many. Yes, we have to celebrate the drop from 120, 130, 140 murders per year. But 50, 40, 30 murders in a year are madness.
What does the choice of ComPol have to do with it? I can see a local ComPol who is exceptionally smart and exceptionally clean, exceptionally insulated from all corruption, making a difference in the long term. But we need an immediate cure, and the only way we can get that is with someone who has no connections here, not even, maybe especially not even, with the ministers. You know it is said in some quarters that these ministers interfere with our process.
At the risk of being told what the PM told the BSCFA leaders, a page he took from Joe Bradley’s book of rude rejoinders, I suggest that the Minister of Home Affairs shud hire a ComPol from foreign for the next two years, and their focus must be on dealing with violent crimes. Another branch of the department could exert itself on minor things. We want peace; we need peace. When it is all cleaned up, when order is restored, THEN we can start again with our own.
DNA reversals are a US thing
Like every time you see a murder conviction reversed in the USA after forensics, DNA, prove/suggest that the wrong man got tagged, the lawyers and some other intellectuals here start crowing about how imperfect our justice system is. Of course there’s no perfect thing under the sun. The justice system does its best to make our world stable. That is all it can do.
People do accept responsibility for crimes they didn’t commit; some people prefer to die rather than use an alibi that brings harm to an innocent party; police do mess up evidence sometimes; and the police department does have individuals with “bad mind” in their ranks. Well, stop sweating; we don’t hang people here anymore. Any lawyer or intellectual who believes a judge called a case wrong, has avenues to pursue evidence to prove the innocence of the one who was wrongly convicted.
Yes, it is for sure that the justice system messes up sometimes. Once, one of my in-laws was working in the vicinity of a police station, and he was asked by a police officer to step in for a moment and join an identification parade, just as a favor, just to make up numbers, and being a friendly, law-abiding sort, he agreed. Well, thanks to doing his civic duty, an old white lady, who had been violated by a dark person with an afro, picked him out! Yes, all things are possible under the sun. It is a fact that a Caucasian with tired eyes wouldn’t be that adept at differentiating between afros and dark faces. Did I say all things are possible under the sun? Well, nearly: one can’t be in two places at the same time. The fact is, my in-law, a skilled artisan who neither drinks nor smokes, was a million miles away from the crime.
In the realm of identification/misidentification, some years ago I told a story about a guy who broke into my house and stole a dollar, at a time when there was mucho dinero in my space. That part about money being in my house, it wasn’t mine. Running the story: I came home, the guy heard me come in, and he jumped through a window and ran into the bush behind my house. In the evening a guy who is not from our village came out of the bush, and fellows in the village who had heard about the break-in collared him and kof him up. I noticed the commotion and I went to see. A few seconds after I arrived on the scene, that very civilized Carlos Santos, R.I.P. Carlos, comes by in his vehicle, and he stops and gives the guys dishing out the beating a good scolding. I remember wondering if I should feel guilty.
The next time I saw this guy, who I learned had over 30 convictions for stealing, was in court. He was up for breaking and entering into my house. The testimonies of the officer who made the arrest and one other person were heard. In the order we sat, I was next on the witness stand. I, the main witness, I was thinking how I could tell the judge that “this” fellow was the guy who broke into my house. At the scene of the crime I only got a glimpse of him. I don’t have photographic memory. I had a good look at the guy who got roughed up. The circumstances and his clothing and his hair and skin color said he was the guilty party.
Ah, on occasion I’m a lucky fellow. Before the prosecutor could say “Colin Hyde”, the guy’s lawyer said his client had decided to plead guilty. Yes, I thought he deserved a muscling from my village brothers. But I wouldn’t have nailed him in court. If hihn mi oanli know he would have gone free! It must be justice. There would have been no end of it if I had “showed up” my village brothers who had gone out on a limb for me, and suffered the reprimands of Mr. Santos for their street justice.
Do you let one hundred murderers go free for fear of a wrongful conviction? If you say yes, your nose is very short. Understand, unavenged murder leads to more murder. The state that doesn’t throw everything it has toward solving murder cases will become a madhouse. Unfortunately, the state errs sometimes. Yes, incarceration is terrible, but the wronged party has hope. Nobody gets the hangman’s noose in Belize anymore.
Data from the US’s Innocence Project
Since the introduction of DNA in the criminal justice system in the US, a number of guilty verdicts, some of them in sensational cases, have been overturned in that country. Now, it is a fact that fingerprints lie, lie detector tests lie, and DNA tests lie. Fingerprints and DNA are pretty accurate; but for a number of reasons, they mess up. There is mishandling at the scene of the crime, and human error in the laboratory; and fraud – you know some lawyers believe all police officers are crooks, and they can be very unscrupulous in their agenda to embarrass the security forces. All sorts of things can go wrong.
The Innocence Project, in the piece, “DNA Exonerations in the United States (1989-2020)”, says the “first exoneration in the US took place in 1989, that there has been 375 exonerees to date, 21 of 375 people served time on death row, 44 of 375 pled guilty to crimes they did not commit, 69% involved eyewitness misidentification, 34% of these misidentification cases involved an in-person lineup, 52% involved a misidentification from a photo array…”
The Innocence Project says “43% involved misapplication of forensic science, 29% involved false confessions…17% involved informants. 268 DNA exonerees [were] compensated,190 DNA exonerations [were] worked on by the Innocence Project, 165 actual assailants [were] identified…those actual perpetrators went on to be convicted of 154 additional violent crimes, including 83 sexual assaults, 36 murders, and 35 other violent crimes while the innocent sat behind bars for their earlier offenses.” A total of 225 of the 375, 60% of the falsely condemned were African American; 117, 31% Caucasian.
The US is very different from us, so it isn’t right to use them as an example to bolster our agendas. The “white” man hasn’t ruled here since 1964. If you want to meet white rule, go north and cross the Rio Grande. I don’t want to throw mud on the US, but you cannot circumvent the fact that white supremacy, divine right of the white man because he looks like the Jesus image they made to fool people, is the order in that country. It is no surprise that that system will be far less than sincere when dealing with non-white people.
Of course, every effort must be made to get the right person. But you can’t let 99 good apples go to ruin to save one good one. Don’t misunderstand what happened in that story Jesus told about the lost sheep. The shepherd wouldn’t risk losing 99 sheep to go and save one. Only after he has the 99 in a pen will he go after the stray.