THE most important thing about any negative experience is the lesson you learn from it. Usually it is that lesson which will prevent you from having to experience it again.

On February 7, 2005 I had a series of negative experiences. It was the day Andrew Hope, o/c Bun Man, was killed by criminals in Spanish Town. He was the leader of the One Order Gang in that area.

I was one of the many police officers who responded to the chaos that erupted because of his murder. At that time I was no stranger to conflicts and violent demonstrations. I had a long history in squatter removals, hostage rescue and hostile takeovers, and was already assigned to a special squad in southern St Catherine.

I was, however, new to Spanish Town.

I was blessed that day to be working with one of Jamaica’s most popular detectives, Mevral Smith, who was the crime chief in the St Catherine North Division. We both entered the mayhem together and heard that thugs had lit the Spanish Town courthouse on fire. We also heard that a traffic cop was trapped in the fire and the fire brigade was being prevented from putting out the blaze.

We escorted a unit there and indeed, the old courthouse and another piece of Jamaica’s history was ablaze and being destroyed. Before the hoses were even touched we came under fire from within the crowd that was demonstrating. Most of the police took cover in the small space in front of the closed shop fronts’ but I had hesitated, and by the time I moved to cover there was no space for me.

The first lesson at the academy that says, ‘Go low, observe, and then move to secondary cover’ is not the best choice when cover is in limited supply. With no cover left for me, I went under the fire truck. I could see the guy who was firing at me. He had actually acknowledged me when he walked past me upon the arrival of the fire truck. I knew him from before as a man I would see at the racetrack. I couldn’t, however, return fire as he was in the middle of the demonstrators and I would likely have hit them. I heard Mevral shouting ‘Don’t fire!’, but this guy’s fire was getting closer and the tyre I was using for cover was way too slim.

Lesson Two: You earn the title lawman.

A criminal can be as irresponsible with his weapon as he chooses but the lawman is forced not to fire at an attacker — even though he would be among his own people who would be supporting his every move. Before I was forced to act irresponsibly, however, out of nowhere a famous lawman known as Bingy White entered the chat (a term my son would use). He came from the rear tank — tear gas in tow — and the protective crowd and the gunman ran for cover, ending what was, for me, a moral dilemma.

Superintendent White has passed on since but his name lives on as one of Jamaica’s greatest lawmen who fought crime to the end like a 20-year-old.

The unarmed and significantly motivated crowd soon returned without their pet gunman and resumed their shouting. I realised they were all implicating a legendary police officer who worked in Spanish Town. His name was Mowatt, and he was the epitome of the brand name police officer so much of us wanted to be: brave, successful, experienced, and feared by all criminal gangs — irrespective of political affiliation. He has since passed, but I remember him and the work he did. They all claimed to have seen him do the shooting. They were so convincing. They were certain.

Lesson Three: I realised then that people really are “barefaced liars”.

I knew they were lying because at the time this incident occurred, Mowatt was at Flying Squad in downtown Kingston. He was nowhere near St Catherine at the time of the shooting. In fact, before the riot was over the same people were blaming a rival gang member for killing Bun Man.

My father, himself a renowned lawman, had warned me about how easily people will tell lies about you and land you in court. The intervention of Superintendent White allowed us to complete the rescue of the police officer, but the building and its history were lost. The traffic cop, who was almost cooked, was one of those cops everyone liked, didn’t really rock the boat too much, and would fraternise in the community. He was a friend to all. He wasn’t badly hurt, but he was never quite the same.

Lesson Four: You are a policeman first and will be turned upon once the situation presents itself.

The riot continued throughout the day, and as the true villain became known the crowd became less hostile to the police. But the courthouse was lost, several police were injured from numerous stone-throwing incidents, and the riot made international news.

One of the lessons I knew before but which was enforced that day was that you can’t turn back time. The violence which almost killed several lawmen that day came about because of people making a mistake about an incident, and acting on it violently and callously. What if they had burnt that traffic cop alive! Their regrets didn’t bring back the courthouse, and they wouldn’t have brought the traffic cop back either.

I saw the almost-roasted traffic cop in Spanish Town on Young Street some days later, at a bar near the funeral home. He was off duty and I was passing in a marked unit. I stopped and had a chat with him, and there was a lady in the bar. She was one of them I had seen in the crowd outside the courthouse shouting and trying to prevent us from rescuing the traffic cop. I told him that the lady beside him was calling for his death days before. The lady said “Nay. Everything copacetic, Nico; dat dun”.

I looked at both of them sipping a midday white rum and thought, ‘Maybe I could understand this easier if I started drinking before lunch as well.’

Lesson Five: You risk your life because it is the right thing to do, not because it will bring about any lasting change.

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