Damned if you do; damned if you don’t

Aug 27, 2017 Features / Columnists, My Column

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Some people in society are often caught in a situation where they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t, none more so than the government. The law enforcement officers are criticized when they allow prisoners to move around without handcuffs.
I have been to the courts and I have seen potentially dangerous prisoners walking around without handcuffs and sometimes without shackles on their feet. Immediately people, spurred by the media, raised a hue and cry. Pretty soon, most prisoners were shackled, although many women were not.
I remember when Major Bruce Munroe, his wife, Carol Ann and Leonard Wharton, were arrested and charged with treason. From the inception we knew that the charges would not stand, that there was simply no evidence. I was at the court when they were taking Carol Ann Munroe back to the holding area of the Georgetown Magistrates’ Courts. They had her feet in shackles.
There was Ms Munroe walking down the concrete stairs of Court One with these shackles on her feet and handcuffs. There is no need to talk about the unbalanced state of such a person. The advice is that anyone climbing up or down a stairway should hold the rails. Carol Munroe could not, but to make it worse, the people escorting her did not hold her and she almost slipped on one occasion. I was angry and actually asked one of the escorts to hold her.
On another occasion, a prisoner hurled a bottle of water at a reporter who was attempting to take his photograph. He was handcuffed to another prisoner, so that one of his hands was free. There were numerous cases of the police attempting to avoid being overly aggressive and coming in for flak.
So there it was, they played by the book to handcuff a 94-year-old man who is before the courts charged with forging a land title.
Most people do not live to that age, and most of them who do are not even mobile or senile, but this man was. The shock was that the police saw it fit to have him handcuffed at the court. I can only assume that whoever did was playing by the rules that apply under such conditions. However, there are now the criticisms.
To my mind, laws are just what they are, but they are not written in stone. Man was never made for the law; therefore the decision to handcuff a 94-year-old man could not have been a specific law. It could not have been written in stone. Surely the authorities did not expect this man to escape from custody. There will be some fallout but nothing significant, because we are a people who fuss for a while.
The late Dr Cheddi Jagan described us as a nine-day wonder. We are impressed and angered by something for no more than nine days. Then we forget. The extent of our protests is a clear indication of that nature.
Society can be fickle. I remember when crime threatened to get out of hand. There was a group of policemen who took on the criminals with a violence that was unprecedented. Guns had just become the weapon of choice for the criminals and the police responded in kind. Criminals were killed and pretty soon society began to protest at the extent of the killings.
The 2002 jailbreak came and gun crimes moved to another level. Even more people died and society continued to voice its abhorrence. A new police commissioner, Winston Felix, came on the scene and he put a lid on police excesses.
A man, Solomon Blackman, who was a former policeman walked into the Brickdam Police Station, disarmed a guard and killed some policemen. Felix was reported to instruct his ranks not to kill Blackman. In the end, Blackman went to prison and killed a prisoner. He did not live long after because the prisoners retaliated.
Soon the police were fighting for their lives and society remained silent, scared at the level of violence, and perhaps pondered their criticisms of the police. When the violence became too much, the very society called on the police to react. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
But what about a middle road? Society has no middle ground. There was an attempt at a bank robbery; the police shot one of the bandits and placed him in their vehicle. The people who gathered around screamed at the victim demanding that he remove his hands and allow the onlookers to see his face.
“Y’all don’t want wuk.” There was no sympathy.
Another was caught in a stall across the road and a voice could be heard telling the police not to kill him. This was because there were people who still believed that life is sacred. These same people would catch a thief and beat him to within an inch of his life. I have seen criminals who expressed joy at the sight of a policeman.
The government is often caught in this boat. Suddenly people who were silent have become vocal. ExxonMobil found oil in places where others searched, largely because of the technology. There was the euphoria, but then came the various pieces of advice to the government. There was even talk that it would have been wise for the government to let the oil remain where it is. Such is the nature of society.
So we are back where we started—the handcuffing of a 94-year-old man. One can only suggest that it is a matter of commonsense and reasoning. People go to jail for the crimes they commit. A man cons some young girls a few months after he is released from prison for a similar crime. A magistrate sentences him to jail and here she applies the law. She sentences him to a period of imprisonment on each charge then orders that they run consecutively. Society applauds. Other convicts would have served concurrent sentences and society would have remained apathetic.

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