A GUY'S VIEW

Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency – SMOKE

The Barbados Government has stated that it intends to set up what is to be called the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency. This is clearly another knee-jerk reaction to a problem which demands careful attention.

The one good thing about this announcement is that it represents a concession by Government that our crime problem is out of hand and needs to be addressed seriously. It seems that the Prime Minister has now put back on her Attorney General hat in an effort to find a solution, since her Attorney General has again come up short.

The problem with running a Government without the useful assistance of persons to whom jobs have been assigned is akin to being a jack of all trades and master of none. Ideas may come, but in the absence of the opportunity to give single-minded dedicated attention to related issues, one is often unable to think through those ideas and take them to their logical conclusions.

The Prime Minister is seeking guidance on the establishment of a Major Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency from a soldier. She clearly does not understand the crime situation facing this country and her Attorney General is unable to help her.

The battle for peace in Barbados will not be won with guns. It is not more force that is needed to solve our crime problem. Putting out fires without understanding why there are so many fires in the first place may find work for firemen, but not prevent fires.

Crime is one manifestation of a deep social dysfunctionalism in our community. Giving soldiers or police officers bigger guns will not correct it. This approach is the misapplication of a resource that bears no relevance to the problem to which it is applied. It seeks to deal with a symptom without knowing what is the disease you are attempting to treat.

The Prime Minister already has a former Commissioner of Police at her disposal. What makes a soldier better equipped than a Commissioner of Police to advise on the establishment of a crime agency? What am I missing? What are the people of Barbados missing? Could it be that there is absolutely no intention of establishing such an agency and this statement is just another attempt to place blinkers on the unsuspecting Barbadian public?

Organised crime is defeated by intelligence, gathered and acted upon by intelligent people who understand what they are doing. There are several techniques that may be employed in this fight, but they have never included war. Unless a country has been destabilised and has fallen into civil conflict, superior force has never been a sustainable approach to solving crime.

A Government should never declare war on its own people. We have problems for which we must find better solutions. We do not like to face the reality that our problems are structural. The underlying structure of our society is flawed and as long as this continues, there will be issues.

Deploying armed units to protect the privileged will do nothing to prevent general criminality. And lest we forget, we should note that the most heavily guarded areas in Barbados are within walking distance of the most economically deprived.

Unfortunately, the more the disadvantaged understand of themselves and why they are where they are, the more difficult our situation will become. The only way to continue to suppress a people who are determined to throw off their oppression is to do it at the point of a gun. That is an unfortunate place for a country to find itself, but not even a gun can stop a determined people. When the brainwashing fails, so too will the gun.

The crime problem faced by Barbados is not akin to that which faced Northern Ireland or Bosnia. The authorities have advised that violent crime here is a feature of contests or conflicts between gangs with an interest in the trade in illegal drugs. If this is indeed the case, if you solve the drugs problem, you go a long way to ridding the country of that level of violence.

Drug raids by heavily armed police officers are the culmination of other work, and the better the preliminary work, the less likely it is to require the heavy arms. The more action the public sees, the less successful was the real police work.

One may also notice that raids and arrests never put a permanent dent in any form of crime. Persons of criminal influence continue their business through proxies or are replaced by others who take over their business. And the beat goes on.

There is a different class of criminal in Barbados that never receives the attention of those who talk most about fighting crime. A lot is said about the members of gangs fighting for turf, but nothing is ever said about the creators of the conduits through which the criminal enterprises operate.

The current Commissioner of Police, informed by his intelligence officers, stated that the country’s ports of entry were the gateways through which drugs and guns come into the country. No counter evidence was produced, but persons said that he should not have made that statement. Is it that he was wrong? If so, produce the better evidence. Is it that he should have kept that information to himself? The problem with that is that every Barbadian already knows what he apparently thought was confidential information, so there would have been no point to not saying it. He did not break any news.

Our downfall is that we identify problems but never implement solutions. Has anything been done to address the problem as identified by the best intelligence there is on the island? It is possible that other sources may have informed the Commissioner’s statement, but that is not for this column.

We should stop trying to bluff Barbadians and take the corrective action that is necessary to address our crime situation. Talking about drafting a new law to set up an irrelevant agency is a side show. Properly resource the assets the country already has and this would be a better use of the country’s scarce resources.

Everything that this fabled agency is touted to do is already in place. There is no need for additional legislation to enable our crime fighters to deal with organised crime and corruption, except if one wants to introduce civil forfeiture as a means of asset deprivation. An additional agency to do what entities are already in place to do is just for the creation of smoke.

Persons in Barbados are alleging corruption in the business being conducted with White Oak. How would the new proposed agency address an investigation of this nature? Would it be independent of the Minister whose conduct may have to be examined in such an investigation?

So we will have the Royal Barbados Police Force, with its several specialised investigative and intelligence gathering arms, the Financial Intelligence Unit, the Integrity Commission proposed to be established under the Integrity in Public Life Bill, the Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency, as well as other resources. We are insulting the intelligence of Barbadians by this red herring being pulled across the trail.

This is not a reasonable solution to the crime problems in Barbados. It just pays another consultant or advisor. Neither does it address the highly unusual activity which surrounds the White Oak contract. Deflecting attention from issues is a good political strategy, but we are playing with the lives of Barbadians. That is serious business.

Barbados Advocate

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