A real dog show

It reported that Assistant Police Commissioner Paul Evans had called a press conference in Melbourne to explain why seven highly trained sniffer dogs had failed to detect any cocaine, despite being on the job for five months.

Hell, we’ve had politicians in power for five years and they haven’t done any of the things they were supposedly trained to do and no one’s ever called a press conference to explain. They don’t seem to be any better at sniffing out carriers of illegal drugs either. But anyways...

The dogs were trained to walk about in public and point out to their handlers people that smelt of drugs. But the dogs kept tumbling freshly washed ladies and bouncing babies left, right and centre all over the streets of Melbourne. When the mark buss, as the saying goes, it was because the bag of white powder they had used to train the poor dogs was not a bag full of coke, but a bag of talcum powder. So Australia now possesses the only pack of mutts in the world that can detect, run down and assault every skettel on the Brian Lara promenade.

Meanwhile, back in Melbourne, heads are being scratched and eventually quite a few of them may roll over what Mr Evans described as "an administrative bungle." This story should be of more interest for our own Minister of National Security Martin Joseph instead of the stories in the English newspapers he flashed at the hugely embarrassing news conference he called a few weeks ago to show that other police forces were catching their nen nens too.

This would certainly have better suited his "them just as bad as we" plan of attack. In fact, he could have gone to town blasting away at this appalling and intolerable waste of time, taxpayers’ money and well, baby powder. He could have lorded it over the poor Antipodes, been in his glee in front of the gathered members of the press, who at the end of it all would have still gone back to their various newsrooms grumbling about the waste of their time and not even a lil snack self.

Asst Commissioner Evans went on to say, "there may be a more sinister explanation, and we cannot yet rule out police corruption." And it is here we separate the mice from the men, the bo rats from the bad johns so to speak. Because there is no way any member of the Trinidad and Tobago police force would come out and even admit that the phrase "police corruption" exists, further more for it actually coming to play in the service that takes itself and its roles and functions seriously. Every role, that is, that doesn’t actually call for accountability and the catching of criminals.

But perhaps I’m being harsh. After all, I have to admit that our boys in blue and grey have more dangerous and unusual perils to deal with than most other police forces in the world. For while the Melbournians must deal with dogs that are likely to run past a drug dealer with 14 condoms uncomfortably stuffed in his person, our policemen must deal with such sci-fi worthy scenarios as spranger rats who are not only skilled at detecting cocaine, but at eating it wholesale too. And let’s not forget the saga of the cocaine in the orange juice. Surely a policeman that can see through tin must be a Star Wars extra. What do we want from them? Blood?!

What we need is for some of those talcum terriers to come down to Trinidad and let loose in Port- of-Spain. The way the average Trini likes to bathe in baby powder town will be a madhouse. And who will everyone be calling on to assist them? The same police we always bad talking.

Comments? Please write

suszanna@hotmail.com