Editorial | Surprising revelation by narcotics head

The statistics seem impressive. Over the past three years, this newspaper reported on Sunday, nearly 2,600 people have been arrested in Jamaica for breaches of the Dangerous Drugs Act. Of this number, 2,481 were convicted by the courts. That is 96 percent.

Take into account that the arrest figure does not include recreational smokers of marijuana who have a few ounces of the drug for personal use. That practice was decriminalised five years ago. Which, therefore, suggests that these arrests and convictions are primarily of people who, at some level, are involved in the international narcotics trade. They just are not the ones at or near the top of the Jamaican narcotics food chain, which, if the head of the police Narcotics Division, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Jervis Moore, is to be believed, includes many foreigners who live on the island. Which raises questions about the competence of the police.

The constabulary often claims that the drug trade is a major conduit through which guns flow into the island. Of Jamaica’s over 1,300 homicides annually, more than 70 per cent of them are committed by criminals with illegal guns. You would expect that this combination of an international narcotics/gun-smuggling business would have a laser-like focus of attention.

That Jamaica is important as a transit point for narcotics, especially cocaine heading for North America and Europe, makes sense. The island is near enough to the Latin American suppliers and North American consumers. It has the advantage of being located on international trade routes. What SSP Moore, however, added to the public’s understanding of the narcotics trade is his confirmation of claims that international drug dealers often post their middlemen in Jamaica to oversee domestic operations.

Indeed, he told The Gleaner that Venezuelans, Panamanians, Haitians, and Costa Ricans were part of this operation but were infrequently busted because they “stay far from the action”. When they are charged, the cases usually don’t stick because the peons take the fall.

ENTIRELY DIFFERENT MATTER

This newspaper, of course, appreciates the difficulty involved in establishing cases against big-time drug operators, especially if they have the cover of seemingly legitimate businesses. But foreigners coming to Jamaica to facilitate narcotics operations seems to us an entirely different matter. It is unlikely that any of the nationalities mentioned by SSP Moore, including Trinidadians, would, for many obvious reasons, immediately and seamlessly blend into Jamaica. Foreigners are often noticed and are noticeable.

Further, foreigners intending to stay for any length of time in the island have to establish their bona fides, including having regularised immigration status. This may require proof of employment, which, in turn, demands applying for work permits – by the employer and employee unless the person poses as an investor or as an individual of independent means on an extended holiday. In any event, such persons must, even if only for immigration purposes, come in contact with the State’s bureaucracy. They establish and leave an electronic and/or paper trail.

Apart from the investigations and information gathering done by Mr Moore’s division, and other specialised units in the Jamaica Constabulary Force, the police maintain a big clandestine information-gathering unit, the National Intelligence Bureau. The Jamaica Defence Force has the Military Intelligence Unit. Jamaica also has intelligence cooperation/criminal information-sharing agreements with the United States, Canada, and Britain. In recent times, it has apparently entered into separate intelligence support pacts with Israel.

If this intelligence apparatus is of any worth, it should, in a small country like Jamaica, soon be picking up network chatter and raw data about a foreigner who has been inserted into Jamaica for any extended period to oversee a narcotics operation.

We assume that this intelligence is turned over to SSP Moore’s unit, where it is expected to be converted to hard evidence capable of surviving the rigours of a court of law. On the basis of SSP Moore’s remarks, with respect to foreign drug cartels’ liaisons in Jamaica and others in the top tier of the business, that rarely happens. And if the big guns happen to be arrested, hardly can the case be made to stick.

So from what SSP Moore had to say, and judging from our distance and vantage point, Antony Anderson, the police chief, needs to take a cold, hard look at the effectiveness of his narcotics division.