You Mean To Say Cops In Developed Countries Are Not Perfect?

On April 19^th of this year a young man known to me walked into my store and pur­chased a new Chrome book com­put­er and a mini key­board separately.
The total cost of the trans­ac­tion $320.00 plus tax , he hand­ed me a cred­it card.
As a mat­ter of course we do not ask for Identification,.

Were we to ask for ID for one we would have to do so for all to avoid accu­sa­tions of discrimination.
Additionally it would make the sim­ple act of ring­ing up a sale more laborious.

So we did not ask him for ID.
Initially we had some dif­fi­cul­ty get­ting the machine card read­er to accept the card . He told me he it was a com­pa­ny card and inputting the num­bers as an over ride would be okay.
That worked , he left with his com­put­er and key­board. Before leav­ing, the gen­tle­man left his busi­ness card with me.

On May 10^th my busi­ness check­ing reflect­ed a charge-back for the total­i­ty of the trans­ac­tion on April 19^th.
I went back to the cred­it card receipt and matched the name on the receipt against the name on his busi­ness card .
They were two dif­fer­ent names.
I real­ized that my busi­ness was scammed out of $330.00

I made copies of his busi­ness card, the cred­it card slip he signed , the charge-back noti­fi­ca­tion from the bank and start­ed a search for the gen­tle­man on the web.
I found him in my very first search on LinkedIn, por­trait and all.
I print­ed off his profile.
A slight­ly deep­er search revealed that 3 years ago he was work­ing in a near­by town as a bank teller .
He was arrest­ed by state police for fal­si­fy­ing doc­u­ments and fleec­ing the bank out of $500.00.

I print­ed off the report and placed it into the file I cre­at­ed and took it to the City of Poughkeepsie Police Department on Wednesday May 31^st.
A uni­formed cop took the report and gave me a blot­ter num­ber which I doc­u­ment­ed as well as his name .
He told me a detec­tive would be assigned the next day and he would get in touch with me the very next day.
I thanked him and left the precinct.

So we are no longer in Jamaica where the Police have no vehi­cles to attend to reports.
In fact on any giv­en day you dri­ve past the city of Poughkeepsie Police depart­ment there are any num­ber of ser­vice vehi­cles just parked there.
If you have any rea­son to walk into the detec­tive bureau there are offi­cers sit­ting around chat­ting away .

Nevertheless when I did not receive a call from the police on June 1^st , ‑2^nd-3^rd or 4^th I was a lit­tle pissed but I sur­mised okay they may have big­ger fish to fry than chas­ing down a fraud case for $330 .00.
However by the time it got around to June 8^th , I thought” hell no , this does not hap­pen in white communities”.

I pulled out the card of a dear friend of mine who is a Captain in the depart­ment intend­ing to call him to find out why no one got back in touch with me.
Then I decid­ed “no I am not doing that , I should­n’t have to call some­one in the depart­ment that I know to get the police to do what they are sworn to do”>

So I decid­ed to call the precinct instead . The woman who answered the phone told me she saw the report after I pro­vid­ed her with the Blot # .
I inquired of her why no one had got­ten back in touch with me?
She told me the police does not always get back in touch with complainants.

I asked her how could that be when they specif­i­cal­ly told me that a detec­tive would get in touch with me the very next day , upon which I could turn over the file to him?
She offered to get me the voice­mail of the uni­formed offi­cer’s to whom I had made the ini­tial report .
I told her what was hap­pen­ing was they were shuf­fling me around and I was not going to stand for it .
I hung up the phone.

By this time I was pret­ty angry , the police do not act this way in white communities.
The tax­es I Pay each year is noth­ing to scoff at, not to men­tion sales tax rev­enue which my busi­ness gen­er­ate for the city , coun­ty and state, so that police offi­cers can sit around and do nothing.
I called the Mayor’s office that same evening.

Months ago I had addressed a Religious gath­er­ing , the Mayor and oth­er offi­cials were in attendance.
I was able to schmooze and speak to them afterwards.
I decid­ed that was my best course of action to get some­thing done.
Mayor Rollison was out of office but an aide took the call and assured me she would call the City’s police chief immediately.

Friday June 9^th a detec­tive called me ‚he assured me he was on his way up to speak to me .
Half an hour lat­er he arrived and took my report.
He was very cour­te­ous and pro­fes­sion­al. He apologized .
I will not dis­close the full extent of our con­ver­sa­tion suf­fic­ing to say he assured me he would do what he could to bring the case to a close.

.….….….….….….…..
Every time the ques­tion of the Jamaican police comes up there is vis­cer­al con­dem­na­tion and dis­re­spect for officers.
In most cas­es those who com­plain and crit­i­cize ignore the good things Jamaican offi­cers do but are quick to ampli­fy the negatives.
We should nev­er be accom­mo­dat­ing of lethar­gy or dere­lic­tion of duty in our pub­lic officials .
But in Jamaica’s case it is impor­tant that we nev­er for­get that as a mat­ter of course offi­cers lack the most basic tools to do their jobs.

As we issue our blan­ket con­dem­na­tion of offi­cers , it is impor­tant that we remem­ber that Jamaican cops are cops like cops every­where else, they are humans, they are imperfect.
And some­times they are doing the best they can.
Many talk about the per­fec­tion of police in devel­oped coun­tries, I beg to differ .
I live right her on Earth , not on Planet Utopia.