06th March 2010
Cowards, Softies or What?

Last week I recalled part of a conversation with a stranger who said he was a regular visitor to this island and who seemed very concerned with rising crime. He planned to build a retirement home and spend more time here. I had to be perfectly honest with this person who had obviously developed a love affair with Saint Lucia. I concluded our frequent visitor could be of positive use to this island’s development in his medical profession and from the obvious contacts in his native America. I therefore decided to reproduce here snippets of our conservation for the benefit of those interested in knowing how others see us. Our visitor fingered the magistracy and others in the legal system as a weak link in the island’s overall development. At one point he posed this question: Are your magistrates’ cowards, softies or what? Based on the trend of the conversation, the clear implication was criminals found guilty after being caught and prosecuted by the police were too often allowed to leave court with a mere slap on the wrist. Our visitor claims (as do many others who live and work here) to have observed a definite ‘soft touch’ by certain magistrates when dispensing justice. The sad fact leads one to conclude that few bad eggs (and facilitators?) have permeated both the police force and the judiciary thereby compromising the entire legal justice system. If this is really so concluded our visitor, it is bound to affect the social and economic development of the island.
He added: “When the police finally do its work correctly and prepare a suitable case against an apprehended criminal, one can only imagine the degree of frustration when bandits are allowed to get away with only a light slap on the wrist. This can corrupt good policemen.” I assured him as best I could, that that was something no one on this island wanted. Before the recent killing and wounding of two policemen last week, the work of police had come under closer scrutiny by persons discussing crime. Citizens and residents alike are apparently becoming increasingly worried that the problem of crime and criminal activity here may have infiltrated the very heart and soul of this island’s legal justice system.
With the growing distrust in the crop of individuals offering to engage in party politics here, many are quietly concerned about the future of this country and its politics. The undeniable fact remains that many persons – including frequent visitors to the island are wondering \ aloud whether our politicians have the will or the guts to do what it takes to stop crime in its tracks. Can those concerned investigate the magistracy (and the police) and set this island on a more civilized and proper path to social and economic development.
We know the saying; there is no smoke without fire. In the present climate of political dog-fighting-contest for attention, one wonders how many of these new fangled politicians are merely waiting to take their places at the feeding trough, forgetting people and country once there.
Those who wish to discuss the subject of crime more thoroughly and to examine the role of lawyers and magistrates in the process would do well to first discover when exactly the undermining of the process of law and order took hold on this island. Many here can recall when marijuana cases were first heard in local courts and the scruffy, unkempt young men who were dragged there accused of growing the ‘plant of life’ as they called it. There was then no export trade in the drug and each island grew its own marijuana; the Rasta brethren taking credit. Clearly this is no longer the case. The growing, harvesting and export of marijuana has increased to such large proportions that there are business associations of growers and sellers of the product throughout the Caribbean, all seeming to operate beneath national law enforcement radar. In addition, marijuana use and sales have found a serious and perhaps more deadly competitor in cocaine whose use adds to the problems, heightening the violence we see everywhere in the Caribbean.
Many believe the introduction of business models resulting in larger volumes in production, sale and profits were accompanied by a more sophisticated businessman who replaced the local country bumpkin and took over the marijuana and drug business. With this shift and with more funds available to pay defense attorneys, ‘drug business/dealers’ seemed to assume the status of folk hero. Such ‘drug barons’ began appearing at the private dwellings of certain newly-made lawyers apparently any time they wished, and were welcome with their bundle of currency, with open arms. Once word of this form of cozy client/solicitor relationship got around a new competition of sorts developed among young law graduates each hoping to build his/her Miami-style mansion here, by sharing a piece of the drug action.
One may argue with conviction that defense is part of the legal process - and of course one would be on target. The point of all this is that such cozy dealings was not the way lawyers here did business within the English Legal System. Additionally, many believe that it may have been from those personal and cozy contacts between client and legal council that certain police officers were unfortunately and unwittingly compromised.