There is a whole lot of brain freeze going on. More and more we are showing a growing propensity to totally ignoring our history and to our own detriment. Take this police sergeant, for example; the one who recently got caught red-handed taking money from a cab driver this week.
Sergeant Patrick Williams was alleged to have been seen Monday during a sting operation collecting $20,000 from a cab driver whom the officer had caught carrying an excessive number of passengers in his cab.
Little surprising
His immediate reaction to being caught was a little surprising to me. He is a police sergeant; where is he going to run to? They know where he works, presumably where he lives, how many kids he has, how much he makes, everything. Why threaten to shoot people and then flee? It only worsens the situation because not only is he now facing corruption charges, he faces the possibility of other charges as well. And since the evidence, we assume, is overwhelming his stay in prison is going to be that much longer.
But I guess you can't think like a criminal and a cop at the same time, which I guess is what caused his brain to freeze.
If he were thinking like a cop - like he was supposed to be - I am sure he would have remembered that it was just about two years ago that another police sergeant was not only caught by the authorities but also by a CVM camera, on Constant Spring Road, taking a bribe from another cab driver. He was so surprised that among other things, he shot off half the family jewels in a violent struggle to evade capture. That arrest occurred during a period when about nine cops were arrested on corruption charges.
If Sergeant Williams had been thinking like a cop - as he should have been - he would have recognised that whenever the bribe is not paid on the spot, the chances of being caught increases exponentially. These things are called trends.
But clearly he was not thinking and now his meal ticket, the police uniform, is gone and for that matter, so is he.
Par for the course
But when you look higher up, this kind of behaviour seems to be par for the course. The brain freeze I mentioned earlier seems to have been affecting members of government as well.
In the wake of the continued drama of Kern Spencer's personal nightmare, it was revealed that Minister of Finance Audley Shaw 'captured' some land. Shaw's defence was not a denial but that he offered to pay for said land!
Huh? What does that mean; that he did 'capture' the afore-mentioned land? Equally bemusing is that it seems that no action is going to be taken against the minister for his confessed indiscretion, no, flouting of the law.
And while I am on the subject of Minister Shaw, can someone actually tell me where his brain was when he suggested that the onset of a recession in the United States would be an opportunity for Jamaica to strengthen its economy, this despite the fact that the US is our main trading partner and if they don't spend we can't eat.
Doomed
When I heard those words coming out of his mouth I told myself that we are - for want of a word I can't use in this medium - doomed. Long before the JLP won the election I suggested that Mr Shaw would not be a good choice for the post of minister of finance, but because I am not in the required "circles" and I have no sense, no one paid any attention. So, here is where I could say, I told you so but I choose not to.
What the heck; you know what, I am saying it. I told you so!
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