Ready to Serve with P.R.I.D.E.

Because of the crime crippling our country, I want to become a police officer. Yes, I am ready to put away my three law degrees, quit my career, and ditch my suits to wear that ugly, old colonial uniform in order to do something to help solve crimes and arrest criminals regardless of their surname or home address.

In the good ole’ days, during times of war, young men served in the military; whether it was voluntarily or by conscription, they served their country with pride.

I want to do the same. I want to risk my life fighting to protect my fellow Trinbagonians from criminals, especially those seemingly untouchable white-collar ones.

Currently, the troops we have sent out to fight are working for the enemy, as they claim to be “fed up” with failing at their jobs, instead of actually doing it. They never wanted the career, they only wanted the permanent “wuk”.

The PNM government, on the other hand, is still playing a blame game with crime, going so far as to now re-classify murders into categories to justify why responsibility lies where they think it should.

According to the Prime Minister, there are regular murders which is the government’s responsibility and “domestic murders” which is the responsibility of the victims.

This husband, father and grandfather, is saying that it is a woman’s choice of a mate that results in her death, in the latter category.

Is this not the same disgusting argument as the disgraced former Port-of-Spain Mayor, Raymond Tim Kee, who decided to police women’s bodies and not his mouth when he basically said that women should expect to be raped when they are scantily clad? The callous sentiments of Keith Rowley made my heart bleed as a feminist, a father, a son, a brother, an uncle, and a nephew; it illustrates why emotional intelligence supersedes the one of the academic variety.

Fortunately for Doc, he was lucky enough to find his soulmate; for others, they think they do until things suddenly change.

To know what a person may turn into years from now requires a combination of extrasensory perception, a crystal ball, a deck of tarot cards and several visits to an obeah practitioner.

When I listen to the asinine comments of those on top, I cannot join their parties, nor can I allow my intellect to be whittled away by the idiocy they call governance, so I want to be a police officer – a detective, where I can use my intelligence to solve crimes. There is one major problem with my plan to serve as a police officer and that is that I cannot and will not work with the majority of people serving in the TT PS. Suffice it say, if I wanted to join a gang, I could have done so during my time in NYC or even easier in thug-land Baltimore.

In order to get patriotic police officers like myself to serve, the entire police service must be fired and immediately replaced through different educational criteria and recruitment processes.

The legal consequences will be trifling to the impact 4000 of my compatriots who share my mind-set will have on this country in a matter of months. It’s not far-fetched: in 2005, the President of the Eurasian country of Georgia fired 30,000 police officers to combat corruption. Ukraine did the same thing in 2015 when every single officer was fired in a country where police and political corruption was so rampant that for a moment I thought I was reading about Trinidad and Tobago.

I am more than willing to serve my country as a police officer without even thinking twice, and I am sure that there are at least 4000 of us out there willing (really and truly) to put our lives on the line for all of our brothers and sisters in this country. I am ready to protect and serve my country with Professionalism, Respect, Integrity, Dignity and Excellence, and while I would rather serve as Prime Minister or at the very least, Minister of Labour, once the TT PS is gutted and revamped, I would g l a d l y do it as a police officer.

For the sake of our country, Dr Rowley, please try calling my bluff.