Cops deserve protection, humanity, says Cummins

Barbadians must recognise the humanity of police officers and support measures to protect them on the job, the Leader Government Business in the Senate urged as the Upper House moved on Wednesday to tighten restrictions on vehicle window tints.

Leading off the Senate’s debate on the Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill, Senator Lisa Cummins also sought to make a case for members of The Barbados Police Service, whom she contended face potential death in their daily public duties, to be provided with all the necessary measures for personal protection.

She drew on the main purpose of the proposed legislation – also known as the tint bill – to highlight that the police service had requested it because of fears by law enforcers in approaching vehicles with heavily tinted windows when executing their duties, especially at night.

“They wanted to have an objective way of measuring what is to be defined as too dark. And so, the tint meters . . . are there for the purpose of making that assessment. You are not putting something in place that you cannot then implement. And that’s where the tint meters came in,” the leader of government business said before spelling out the bill’s main purpose.

She said: “This is about protecting the police. Secondly, in protecting the police, it is also not about criminalising persons who do the wrong thing, that are not themselves criminals. That is why there is a penalty, as opposed to a criminal conviction as a consequence.

“And I am certain that inasmuch as Barbadians have talked about it, if people were getting locked up at taxpayer expense, and being fed and watered up in Dodds [Prison] over tint, we would have heard even more of a hue and a cry. And so, the purpose of the penalty is to serve as a civil response to doing the wrong thing.”

Senator Cummins, the minister for energy and business development, also complained of a lack of respect by too many citizens for police authority.

In recent weeks, she said, she has been “blown away” by the level of indiscipline demonstrated by some Barbadians who boldly dismissed “legitimate” police instructions, even after – at a certain scene – removing barricades and caution tape and going on their way as though they had done nothing wrong.

The minister added: “And for the police to be dealing with the category of persons out there, hopefully in the minority and not in the majority, who think that they could do as they feel. They have no respect for authority, they do not feel as though the rules that bind the rest of us, also bind them.

“They live in lifestyles in some instances of either dead or jail, and they are not bothered by who they take down with them; and it only takes one situation to go badly, where our police on the front line of protecting our people, our communities and our country, encounter somebody who feels as if they have nothing to lose, and they open fire on a police vehicle or on a policeman, as he approaches a vehicle.

“And all the government has said to the police service who asked for this amendment is, okay, okay, because we are not out there with you. You are out there. You are protecting Barbadians; and if Barbadians are concerned about crime, if Barbadians are concerned about what they are seeing on the streets, either with gun violence, or recent stabbings that we have seen, then it is only logical that right-thinking Barbadians also understand, that the same category of criminal that they are concerned by on the one hand, they have to also put all of the protective mechanisms in place for policemen.”

Senator Cummins pleaded with residents to show a greater appreciation for that part of the police personality which desires to enjoy the human pleasures of life and culture so often cut off from them.

She pushed back against critics of the police services’ staging a recent special Kadooment-style parade through The City.

She argued that police officers deserved to have their time of fun because during the Crop Over Festival season, all vacation is suspended.

The leader of government business dismissed the criticism of those who gave the impression that most of the police service was taking part on the streets of The City in the recent police jump-up, while the country faced a surge in violent crime.

“We as Barbadians have to be very careful,” Senator Cummins declared. “We dehumanise people in so many instances, based on the functions that they have. We forget that politicians are people; we forget that policemen are real, real people; and so, the things that we enjoy for ourselves, we grudge them for wanting for themselves too.

“So, we don’t see that they don’t get to enjoy things in the same way that we do. We don’t see that they don’t get to enjoy their vacations in July and in August like half of the members of the public service who want, and the private sector who want to be able to enjoy their Crop Over period. They are not real, real people you know . . . they don’t want to enjoy their culture too; they have to stay in a corner, because they are not real folks. 

She continued; “The fact that the police service sought to provide an opportunity for their members to have their own Kadooment, before Kadooment, before the season gets started, we all of a sudden up in arms about it. They are not real men and women; they are not real Bajans; their citizenship is not real like ours is; and so, they are not meant to do the things that we do. So, serve and protect us only, but don’t be human in your own right. Don’t be Bajan in your own right. There is something very problematic about that thought process.”

She was also careful to stress that the bill was not a crime-fighting measure, but that since taking up the government in 2018, the Mia Mottley administration has implemented a wide range of anti-crime provisions as part of its overarching plan of action.

These included financial allocations to the police service rising from $107m to a record $145m this fiscal year, an increase in prosecutors from eight to 20, and judges who handled criminal, civil and family cases went from two to eight dedicated to criminal trials only. (EJ)