by Colin Hyde
If I get chomped on for this piece, I want you to know that the seed was sown in my head by former government minister Sedi Elrington. He’s the one who first said maybe we need a foreigner at the helm of our Scotland Yard and regular constabulary. I remember the gentleman got a lot of flak. That’s tame. He got skewered.
Hey, you do see how we have more faith in our justice system since we brought in numerous foreign judges. It’s not because our judges weren’t capable; it is that it is damned hard functioning at home in a small country. It’s a difficult job for the top brass in the police. That’s why I think when we change top cop again, we should go to Barbados, Jamaica, Canada, or to the British.
Those who jumped all over Mr. Elrington when he made his suggestion said no self-respecting independent nation looked outside its borders to fill the top posts. I’m not with this rigidity. We keep forgetting we are not a big ship, that we are a lee dory. The sea monsters plow through the waves; we have to dance, navigate—we thrust, we pull back, and then we ride. We are not in the exact mold of the old nation states.
Another argument against a top cop from foreign soil was that it would deflate ambitious police officers, who would no longer be able to access the top post. That’s rough, but we have to be practical; we have to do what works out best for us. When the British were in charge, a time when no one cared too much about our feelings, we got officers from Barbados and Jamaica to police our streets. The main story is about getting the job done.
About the foreign judges, we have this lawyer set that are unhappy about that. We have heard the story that these judges don’t know our culture. Well, dammit, murder, rape, and armed robbery are the same ugly crimes everywhere. Gone are the days when lawyers marched in and out of the court rooms like they owned the place. All the while, as we were on the slide from a tranquil haven to a murderous state, they were playing heroes. Former AG, Ms. Magali Marin-Young deserves big points for not being afraid to remedy a failing situation.
We could get into a discussion about why we lost our tranquility. I will say it here that I am sure we have had a series of talented top cops. I, of course, have to be partial to Bernard Bevans, because I grew from boyhood to young adulthood in his neighborhood.
Top cop is a very difficult job. There will be politicians who want favors when they are in need, and there is the drug trade that corrupts officers in many ranks, and there is the fact that we are a cash poor country and can’t pay our officers sufficiently to cover all their basic bills. One of the biggest problems out there is the familiarity. Some people in high places boast that they have no problem carrying out their duties. But it’s a rare one indeed who can operate with such blinders on.
A famous/maybe infamous baseball pitcher of old by the name Early Wynn once declared that if his grandmother hugged the plate (hugging the plate gives an advantage to the batter), he would knock her down, throw her a fastball near her chin. He did throw at batters a lot. But if you can believe that he would have knocked down his granny, you’d also believe that the top cop and the politicians are 100% insulated from influence.
When the present AG worked from behind a shingle, he said that people who call for the death penalty champion the life sentence when a loved one ends up on death row. Of course he was right. There we have a big reason why we can’t put so much responsibility on individuals. It’s human nature to go soft in certain situations. Only the ostrich buries its head in the sand.
Whoa, I never said a top cop from foreign is a perfect fit. A good thing is that we would find it far easier to excoriate a foreigner if they tripped up. The best thing is that in a blink we’d all get together and buy out their contract if they had trouble doing the job.
The people in America that Biden doesn’t represent
Ferreting through the agendas of Biden and Trump, the two frontrunners for the most powerful job in the world, we find one certain common ground only. They both give Israel license and give Israel weapons to murder and destroy their neighbors and take their land. I see where Netanyahu has played a real dirty hand against Biden. Netanyahu and his far-right crowd choose Trump over Biden because Trump recognized Jerusalem as their capital, and Trump proposed a two-state solution that buoyed Israel and insulted all Palestinians. The longer Netanyahu continues battering the Palestinians, the better for Trump at the polls. That’s because there are many people in Biden’s camp who don’t believe Israel should be supported in its genocide, while there is not a single person in the Trump camp who isn’t championing Israel’s push to drive the Palestinians into the sea.
Biden doesn’t represent lily white people in America who are terrified the white milk is turning to a chocolate drink, brown like the people of Geronimo who once ruled that land. Biden doesn’t represent people who don’t want to bake a cake with two men at the top. All the reports say that America, which because of its Hollywood has, ehm, been called Sodom and Gomorrah by its enemies at times, and also Babylon the Great Harlot, has become quite tolerant of the gay lifestyle. But a hefty percentage of Americans remain Leviticans, and these types want no part of Biden, Harris, Buttigieg, the entire Democrat lot.
Biden doesn’t represent the “born again” people who believe word for word that wicked Eve seduced weak Adam and made him eat an aapl that caused our world to fall into sin. Biden doesn’t represent people who believe that high-powered rifles are household defense weapons, and it is a right for Americans to own an arsenal with AK47s and bazookas so they can dream of playing at William Walker.
Biden doesn’t represent people in America who want to put a cramp on their Social Security scheme. Many people who hate SS say that the scheme encourages a disease called laziness, a disease which they say is prevalent in urban black and brown communities. Biden doesn’t represent people who believe in trickle down, the economic system that lets the rich run unfettered. In economic philosophy, the Biden crowd is a lot more like George Price than the Trump crowd is. Biden raised the minimum wage and backed workers in their vehicle industry when they went on strike. The Trumpists are out to reverse those measures. Biden wants to tax the rich more, and Trump wants to tax the rich less.
Biden doesn’t represent people who hate immigrants who aren’t white. There’s a race story there, and one that’s about jobs. Looking at the economics story, Obama explained to Americans that immigrants play an important role in their country, that they aren’t competing with Americans for the menial jobs they do. But many Americans aren’t smart enough to grasp how their economy works.
We’ll end here with this: Biden doesn’t represent people who are anti a philosophy called “woke.” The woke weren’t content with exposing Confederate hero Robert E. Lee, they melted down his statue. There are people over there who worshipped at that shrine. They are there, they exist. Some of them are Nazis and KK. It is what it is.
The majority of us prefer Biden, but it is the reality over there that many people don’t care for him. People who don’t like Trump say his supporters are the worst kinds for backing a man with some pretty low behavior. You bet many people who vote for Trump hold their nose when they enter the booth to cast their ballot. They know he is no real born again, he isn’t anti-gay, and he is soft on loose women just like the Democrats are. He gets their vote because if he wins, many of the Democrat agendas they hate will get crushed.