Corruption In Jamaica Not Confined To The Inept Police: Shit Flows Downstream.….

Remarkably when­ev­er the issue of cor­rup­tion comes up for debate in Jamaica the con­ver­sa­tion auto­mat­i­cal­ly defaults to the police.

One would have to divest one­self of real­i­ty to fall into the trap both polit­i­cal par­ties cre­at­ed in our coun­try, in order to believe that the police depart­ment is the ground zero of cor­rup­tion on the Island.
As opposed to the fac­tu­al real­i­ty that the two polit­i­cal par­ties are pop­u­lat­ed with thieves, liars and alleged­ly even those who pay to have oth­er Jamaicans murdered.
Every ratio­nal per­son knows that shit does not flow upstream.

This is the rea­son that com­ments attrib­uted to Zachery Phillips, the deputy chief assis­tant US attor­ney for the District of Colorado are spot on. Phillips who is assigned to the Organised Crime Drug Task Force,is in Jamaica to address an Anti-Corruption Round-table organ­ised by the US Embassy and the University of the West Indies’ Department of Government.

Asked about Police cor­rup­tion on the Island by local media, Phillips a for­mer cop and now attor­ney said “Our soci­ety as a whole has to say ‘hey, we appre­ci­ate you as a police offi­cer, but you don’t get spe­cial treat­ment because you’re a police offi­cer’.”
“I go back to my days as a police offi­cer… the free cof­fee, the free meal, that was accept­ed ²⁵⁄₃₀ years ago,” he said. “Now it’s not accept­ed, it’s reject­ed, so it has to be a change in men­tal­i­ty, not just with the police, but with all of soci­ety.”

The ques­tion though not out­right inane, still demon­strat­ed the myopic con­text in which jour­nal­ist and oth­er ele­ments of the wider soci­ety view cor­rup­tion in a nar­row prism.
The round-table is sup­posed to be about cor­rup­tion. I take that to mean “cor­rup­tion”, not just police corruption.
Surely the Americans are ful­ly aware of the deep cor­rup­tion which exist in the Jamaican soci­ety as it does the American society.
What they won’t do is scape­goat their law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ty as both polit­i­cal par­ties on the Island have done, result­ing ulti­mate­ly in a chasm between that com­mu­ni­ty and the pub­lic they serve.

What the ques­tion­er cer­tain­ly did not antic­i­pate was that Zachary “Zak” Phillips, Drug Task Force Deputy Chief, is still a law-enforce­ment offi­cer who is also a for­mer cop would not be exco­ri­at­ing law-enforcement.
The endem­ic cul­ture of cor­rup­tion in the con­tracts awards process and oth­er Jamaican Government expen­di­tures are well know and documented.
To date, despite the lit­er­al pil­fer­ing of untold bil­lions of dol­lars and oth­er despi­ca­ble acts of cor­rup­tion by both polit­i­cal par­ties in and out of pow­er, not a sin­gle politi­cian has been jailed since the late JAG Smith.

The brain dead media, too lazy and com­plic­it to tack­le the cor­rup­tion in Government is quite com­fort­able to con­tin­ue with the decep­tion that cor­rup­tion is con­fined to the police.
The inep­ti­tude and cor­rup­tion of the Barney Fyffe police depart­ment was cre­at­ed by both the People’s National Party and the Jamaica Labor Party as insur­ance against jail being a real­i­ty for them and their cronies.

This sim­ple fact has seem­ing­ly elud­ed what exists as media on the Island.