ST LUCIA DYSFUNTIONAL BY DESIGN?

You think that it's an accident that the police are always under funded,
underpaid, undermanned and struggling to keep up with the issues of the
day?

You think it's an accident that the ghettos keep growing and growing, even
though there are more schools and more jobs and more businesses and more
opportunities than there were 20 years ago?

Why is it that boys who are essentially juvenile criminals are housed in
the same unit as non-criminal boys in need foster care?

You think it's by chance that the Boys Training Center is a pre-school for
Bordelais? And what about the people who profit the most from drug dealing
and gun-running?

You think it's an accident that they are among the most respectable people
in society? Is it an accident that the people who die from gun violence
are little poor boys from the ghetto?

Earlier this week, in a not-so-secret corner of Police Headquarters at the
end of Bridge Street, three senior police officers vented their deepest
frustrations with one reporter who wanted to know the truth about the
recent eruptions of gun violence-not just the facts.

On the condition of anonymity, they began to share the deeper truths that
either cannot or will not be released to reporters who merely want the
gory details of the latest outburst. Police frustration is bottomless,
police impotence matched only by their knowledge that the corruption that
feeds the violence goes deeper than even low level people in the drug and
gun business can even imagine. While the so-called gangs and the factions
within gangs battle for supremacy or to settle old scores, their own
gang-the gang of law enforcers-are the most beleaguered and besieged of
all. They can't even trust themselves.

"Bribes used to be paid in cash," said one of the three officers, looking
at the other two, either for confirmation or with suspicion-it was hard to
tell which. "But they [the drug bosses] realized they had more stock than
hard cash and it was in their interest to pay bribes with goods instead.
You know what that means?"

It means corrupt cops, customs officers, lawyers, judges and politicians
are not just accepting money to turn a blind eye anymore. It means that
sometimes the guardians and dispensers of justice are actually active drug
dealers themselves. Where they used to be just well-greased cogs in the
complex engine of corruption, they are now drivers, adding fuel to the
tanks and pressing the accelerator to the floor for profit. The result is
that society as a whole is headed for a crash. And still the church of
drug money grows, gaining new converts faster than a Seventh Day Adventist
crusade can make a Catholic abandon Sunday worship. But while the new
converts wage holy war as if they are infected by fever, the leaders of
this religion in their quiet bourgeois neighbourhoods, their children
secure in the sanctity of private schools, rake in the dollars.

As one cop put it: "The people who profited most from drug dealing in the
last couple of decades are not the drug barons that everyone knows so
well. The people who made the most from drug dealing are respectable
members of society. Some of them are retired now and enjoying their money
and status as though they never did anything wrong. Young people are dying
in the street and in their homes, and these persons are living high on the
proceeds of their activities. You think that is an accident?"

Many cops believe the young ghetto men are programmed and the efforts of
church and state-such as they are-to maintain some social stability and
reinforce the moral backbone of St Lucia are ridiculous when compared to
the organized and attractive efforts to make gunmen of their sons and
whores of their daughters.

"The bosses are not going to go out and pull the trigger themselves," said
a cop. "They need somebody to do it for them." And so violence is
glamorized. Crumbs of drug profits are portrayed as fast and easy money
and the kids are lured into a lifestyle that affords them small material
things. All they have to do is exchange the ethic of hard work and
knowledge for a lifestyle where the only challenge is to not get blown
away by a rival . . . or a friend.

"So what are the solutions?" asked the reporter, frustrated by the
officers' reluctance to name names when they pointed fingers. "And if
things are really this way, what are the police for? They're just another
part of the game, aren't they?"

The most senior of the three said: "The violence cannot be dealt with by
enforcement. Enforcement can deal with instances of violence but it cannot
deal with the issue. The police are the smallest part of policing. People
are the largest part of policing. People are the eyes and ears of the
police. People are the keepers of their own peace and prosperity. The
police are just the enforcers. People talk about this thing as though the
police are not doing enough or the police are involved or the police are
this or that. The police cannot do magic.

The police can deal with incidents, yes. But it is like dealing with a
rash. We apply some ointment and make the rash go away. But the incidents
of violence are just a rash that appears on the skin. The rash is just a
symptom. The problem is in the blood. To cure the problem, you need to do
something much more fundamental. Without a cure, the rash that was healed
on your finger just appears by your balls."

"But," the reporter noted, "given that the true profiteers of drugs and
guns are not the ghetto youth but members of the highest echelons of
society, given that the corruption has infiltrated law enforcement,
justice, politics, why would people think they can trust the police?"

The cops saw it another way. In a recent gun amnesty, about half a million
dollars was paid and not one confidential source was betrayed by the
police.

"How come nobody reports that?" one cop asked, on the verge of accusing
the media of being at least an incidental partner in the conspiracy to
mamaguy the ghetto youth into being the pawns of the respectable
millionaires who actually run the drug business. To him, the truth is that
the corruption of drugs, guns and violence has infected not just the upper
echelons of society, but the ordinary people as well.

"In the Mabouya Valley, for example," he said, "community policing is
almost a farce because the culture of drugs and guns, the fast money, the
lifestyle, the 'glamour' of it are so well entrenched that community
policing makes no sense.

"Almost everybody is involved, directly or indirectly." It seems that
those who are not involved are a small and scared minority quietly trying
not to get shot by stray bullets.

And to top it all off: In spite of government promises to train more new
recruits, there are fewer officers on duty today than there were in 2006.

You think that is an accident?