Police powers of the past

DIANA MAHABIR-WYATT

Restaurants are opening again. Well, some restaurants are opening again. Among those that have not shut their doors for good, there is often on the menu an item called “soup of the day”. Ice cream shops have an equivalent item called “flavour of the day”. And media houses and blogs have a “topic of the day”. The topic of the day for the past several weeks is police brutality. Which started, quite legitimately, with the police murder of George Floyd in the US. It has morphed into the much broader issue of the use and abuse of state power, and far from being simply “a flavour of the day”, it has become “the issue of the revolution”.

It was also, in England, the issue of the day in the year 1215, June 15 to be exact, when a group of angry landholders met John, the head of their then government in a field called Runnymede and forced him to sign a document, the Magna Carta, that became known throughout history as the foundation of constitutional rights of citizens against the abuse of state power. In 1215 it mainly protected the one percenters of the day, but as these things do, it grew, and morphed into what the Constitution of TT states about the obligation of the State to protect all the people living in the country from arbitrary arrest and detention. This obligation exists, regardless of age, which means from birth to death, regardless of income level, which covers from indigent street dwellers to today’s one percenters; regardless of national origin, which includes those who hold refugee status, and regardless of residential location, from Sea Lots and Morvant to Maraval and St Clair.

It appears that the group most discriminated against in TT is the elderly. Could it be because, like the residents of Sea Lots they are the most powerless? There is an underlying strand of DNA in whole nations of people that seem to lead those with power to need to control those weaker than themselves, and those with little power to seek to dominate those they perceive to have even less as it makes them feel more equal to those on the top of the dominance chain. This sometimes leads to enormous kindness and compassion. It sometimes leads to abuse and the enjoyment of torture..

Power is the most addictive of all pleasures. To slightly misconstrue the poet Pope, who surely understood politics if ever anyone did: “You meet with power, resentful of its face you first endure, then pity, then embrace.” All human relationships involve power dynamics: religious, familial, political, community, commercial, sports, and, as the founder of child psychology, Jean Piaget observed, even children in the playground. If you are honest enough to face yourself you will find it, sometimes to your horror inside of you, when you suddenly realise that you are using the same tactics on others that you resented when they were used on you, from patronising the less fortunate to lionising the more fortunate. It is more catching than covid19.

The police service is a quasi-military organisation. When trainees first come in, as my uncle who trained the military told me: “First they break you, then they make you.” They believed it was necessary in order to instil the kind of discipline necessary so that thought will not get between instinct and response in situations where it is kill or be killed in battle. That kind of training strips you psychologically naked before building you up into a machine that obeys orders without hesitation or question. It has been used for centuries to forge bonds with one’s congregation, social group or “batch” like those forged between siblings developed together from naked infancy. It is a technique used not only in the military; it has been a philosophy of training with royalty and certain religious orders for centuries, and, of course of the “Jim Jones” cults and criminal gangs that demand instant unquestioning obedience to orders even if they seem to be irrational.

Parents sometime think that that is the right way to bring up children so that they learn to never question authority, whether that of a gang leader, a husband or a matriarch. In my experience it has also resulted in the sexual abuse of children by adults “in loco parentis”. It is said also to be why professionals cover up the mistakes of their fellows, even when they result in death. This was once unquestioned and uninvestigated.

That has changed, or should have, as our constitutions have evolved. Our constitution, guarantees human rights to all that live in our country, and the police service has evolved from the old police "force” where once, a few decades ago, an 83-year-old woman was arrested, handcuffed and put in a police cell because her male neighbour said that she had planted ochroes on a piece of his land, adjourning hers. That was only a few years after a mentally ill woman who took off her clothes and ran down Wrightson Road was shot and killed by two officers in uniform. As anyone could see, she was unarmed, but they claimed they considered her to be a danger to them. The issue here is, of course, that, as they were taught, they responded to a perception of danger, as irrational as it was, without thought.

The CoP is a good man doing a difficult job with many officers that appear to be still using psychological tools to handle an environment and a culture that existed many generations past. He needs all the help he can get to effect the necessary changes.