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Beware, Mr Commissioner, beware!
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
In this news business, we have heard so much that it is difficult to surprise us anymore. Yet, we must admit to being amazed by information we are receiving about how some highly placed individuals use their position in the security forces for absolutely corrupt purposes.
Under confidential cover, we are told that individuals who are bankrolling police officers are able to use them against even their competitors in business.
One of the worst cases we have heard of is one suggesting that trumped up information about drug trafficking, money laundering and other such despicable crimes, was sent to foreign agencies with representatives here, including the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), to cause action that would result in embarrassment of a commercial competitor.
Thankfully, that attempt was caught in the nick of time, thus preventing the proverbial egg on the faces of the DEA, the security forces and other agencies which would have been, innocently we are told, pulled into the net of deception. And the persistence of the information suggests that this is much more than rumour.
We make reference to this matter in order to caution the honest policemen and women, including the commissioner of police, Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin, and agencies with which they have to deal, to be utterly cautious in handling information supplied to them from the security forces, about our own Jamaican citizens.
It is no secret that there are corrupt individuals in our security forces, as there are everywhere. However, the danger to the police force disintegrating and losing any goodwill it now has among the Jamaican public is obvious if it were to be found that the leadership could not be trusted.
It gets worse. Jamaica's national security is greatly enhanced by its co-operation with foreign agencies. The day it is felt that information from the security forces could not be relied on to be objective and factual, all that critical relationship could be destroyed.
Our war on crime would get nowhere, if innocent citizens were targeted for no other reason than the fact that their competitors were playing dirty, by using equally dirty cops against them.
We can only hope that there are adequate checks and balances in the systems and channels through which information is passed and filtered to and from our security forces, especially to foreign agencies, to ensure that those who are clean do not get shafted by unscrupulous competitors with cops on their payroll.
A trustworthy, corruption-free security force is something in which the entire nation has a vested interest. The burden of ensuring that this is achieved rests on Commissioner Lewin who must keep his eyes open at all times for those who would sell this nation for a mess of pottage.
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