Daniel Thwaites | Speed kills – ask ACP Welsh!

On any given day in Jamaica, one may be treated to stunning displays of stunt driving on public roadways, confessions by criminals for avoidance of punishment, high-level ­deception, double standards and bly-giving by police, careless ­delegitimising of the justice system, boiling citizen outrage, declarations of states of emergency, bureaucratic fumbling, and summary execution of wrongdoers.

What is strange is when all arise so fast and furiously out of the same incident and when there are so many dramatic twists and turns to the story as has happened with the curious drama of ‘the Dunrobin Drift Video’.

In the first act of this drama, the ­omnipresent mobile phone camera records hijinks by a Mercedes-Benz tearing up a piece of public road. This isn’t your garden-variety ‘take-off-with-a-screech’ or even your profit-induced taxi-man’s reckless endangerment. This is a full-on, high-velocity circus act with burning rubber, hellish smoke, a spinning vehicle, ­drifting, donuts, and segments of a ­cheering crowd.

Act Two sees Assistant Commissioner of Police Bishop Dr Gary Welsh accepting a ­heart-felt apology from Sean Paul the entertainer. Actually not. Turns out it was a Sean Paul ­look-alike named Dennis Dietrih, assistant to cricketer André Russell, who solemnly swears to forever never ever drive like that again. The bishop performs absolution on the spot, ­highlights this as a teachable moment, and ­dispatches the young entertainer with a promise to do education about road safety at his next concert. It emerges that Rev Welsh has pardoned 140 other drivers in a three-day binge of clemency and compassion.

Act Three: Public furor! How could the man in charge of public safety and traffic enforcement do this barefaced catch-and-release? Aren’t we all sick and tyerrrrrd of the horrible driving, and isn’t this an endorsement of it? Was he let off with a warning because of class, browningstatus, or because of association with a ‘cebrelity’ cricketer?

FIERY PROMISE

Act Four: The policing bishop, apparently stung by the criticism of his leniency, takes the podium at the First International Symposium on Traffic Investigation and Black Box Analysis at Caribbean Maritime University and promises brimstone and fyah on traffic violators. In a calm explicatory phrasing, the Rev Dr Martin Luther Welsh expounds:

“As of September 1, we are going to set up customer service centres for people who run afoul of the Road Traffic Act,” he said, outlining one such change. “You will not be pulled over on the highways or narrow corridors. Since the number of ­tickets seems to be mounting, we are going to be using summonses. This removes the option of just paying a fine. If someone is arrested on a bench warrant, we will take you to court when it is convenient.”

He went on to explain that you would be given a number and that you would wait patiently until that number is called, just like at the US Embassy or at the bank.

Again, the public reacted with something just short of disbelief and horror. I don’t know if Rev Welsh understands that most people are aware that at the end of the long wait at the embassy, or at the bank, lies frustration and resentment. Frustration that the visa was denied and resentment that the bank done draw out de likkle money in fees and charges.

Anyhow, it doesn’t take much imagination to realise that ‘customer service centres’ is likely something far more sinister. Herding people has a magnificent ancestry, but usually relies on euphemisms such as ‘relocation centres’, ‘detention camps’, ‘reservations’, and the like. An involuntary 'customer service centre’ is just too rich. Hence, more public befuddlement and furor.

SIGH OF RELIEF

Final Act: It all comes crashing down. Cabinet hauls the commissioner of police and his wacky ACP before them to explain themselves. The Rev Dr ACP is cut loose to an undisclosed location (probably a customer service centre for the temporarily insane), and we breathe a collective sigh of relief.

Whew! We may now return to the chaos on the roads with the sure and certain knowledge that it coulda worse! That might not be the preferred outcome of the situation. Nobody has yet been charged for the Dunrobin donuts, so it’s not as if the rule of law has been vindicated or anything. In fact, the confession appears to have been a concoction as more video appeared darker than the supposed confessing entertainer.

There are, undoubtedly, many other lessons to be drawn from the whole affair. Specifically regarding Bishop Welsh, my granny used to say, “When plantain waan dead, it shoot,” but I hesitate to use that phraseology in connection with anything related to the Jamaica Constabulary Farce, particularly because with the hapless bumbling of the Opposition, the Government has managed to normalise states of emergency.

A less-exotic observation is that, at least in the affairs of mortals, justice must precede mercy, or there will be neither. Leniency, applied ­indiscriminately, is just laxness and disorder. That’s how I understand the public revulsion to the Reverend ACP’s ostentatious “forgiveness”.

One friend said to me, “this guy was the ­commissioner’s choice, so there must be egg on his face”. I suppose there’s something to that.

But I believe another friend was even more insightful. His thought: “Do you see how swiftly the commissioner executed? If only we had that kind of accountability elsewhere in the Government.”

It seems to me that both observations are right. The commissioner certainly did get some egg on his face, but he decided he wasn’t in the mood for eggs that morning. And since the retribution happened so fast, I’m not furious, just bemused that regarding the capital’s major traffic problems, there has been so much movement but no discernible progress.

Daniel Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.