By IPS Correspondents
GEORGETOWN, May 9 2006 (IPS)

Faced with growing threats from drug traffickers, gangland violence and money launderers, Caribbean governments are turning for help to U.S. and European law enforcement agencies, enlisting them in local police forces and using their greater expertise in the forensic sciences to crack major cases.

Analysts say white officers have not been seen in numbers since the colonial era, but they are now returning because governments have not ensured that their police forces are as modern as they should be.

For example, audio and video-taped recordings, as well as DNA evidence, are still not accepted by most courts, making successful prosecution of tough and high-profile cases difficult.

Jamaica, which for most of the last decade has recorded in excess of 1,000 murders a year, was the first, with then-Prime Minister P.J. Patterson offering the position of assistant commissioner – the third highest level from the top – to a British Scotland Yard officer and indicating that up to 10 such officers could be on its force serving in specialised positions in the near future.

Oil and gas-rich Trinidad and Tobago, straining under the weight of runaway drug-related gang violence, kidnappings for ransom and other violent crimes, recently began hiring some 39 foreign officers – although the move did not go down well with the local Police Social and Welfare Association.

“We were left in the dark. There was never any consultation, and all we know is what we heard and saw in the print and electronic media. There is a drop in the morale of the police service and unless the administration addresses certain things, the situation will not change,” said association spokesman Noel Chase.

“At the end of the day, the responsibility of the TT Police service lies with us. Scotland Yard has their own rogue elements, let’s not forget. Unless we deal with the problems of late overtime payments, dilapidated working conditions and rundown buildings, morale will continue to be low,” Chase said.

In St. Lucia, the Kenneth Anthony administration, panicking in the face of a record number of murders in the last two years – 37 in 2004 and 2005 compared to less than 15 each year prior – has bitten the bullet and like its regional neighbours, appeared to have put national pride on the backburner and signed up seven British “bobbies” to work alongside hard-pressed if not overwhelmed local sleuths.

Phil Sinkinson, Britain’s number two man in Jamaica, said at a ceremony introducing British officers that “the high level of violent crime is perhaps the single greatest brake to Jamaica’s growth and development. No country can survive under that burden.”

Guyana, the other regional destination with a serious crime problem, including last month’s unprecedented assassination of Agriculture Minister Satyadeo Sawh, his brother, sister and a residential security guard, is also laying the foundations to engage officers from Britain and the U.S. to plan strategies to tackle armed gunmen roaming the country.

In the last year or so, the Bharrat Jagdeo administration, which has made serious policy mistakes handling the police and military in recent years, has several times asked the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to intervene in the South American republic to help the under-funded, under-manned and poorly paid police force solve some spectacular crimes, including the murders of four U.S. citizens last year.

The FBI is also helping the military with DNA and other forensic science work in determining which soldiers stole 30 Russian-made AK-47 rifles from an army depot in February. The government has said it is seriously considering following the lead of other nations in bringing in foreign investigators to work as advisers.

In a country that prides itself on sovereignty and the principle of non-interference in the affairs of independent states, Guyanese authorities have largely given the U.S. a free hand to carry out investigations, DNA testing and other exercises because it is widely accepted that locals are not up to it, at least at the level of crime scene investigations.

Just this week, FBI agents led police and the military on a sweep of a rented home just south of the capital, where they arrested two Trinidadian nationals including one from a radical Black Muslim sect that tried to topple the island’s government in 1990.. The suspect, David Millard, is wanted for murder back in Trinidad. He has since been deported.

Along with the Miami-based U.S. Southern Military Command, the agency has been supplying metal detector equipment and satellite information to Guyanese enforcers as they fight big-spending drug traffickers, blamed for everything from armed robberies to carrying out mafia-style hits for connected businessmen.

In effect, authorities have virtually ceded responsibility for taking down powerful drug cartels, which the George W. Bush administration claims are responsible for up to a quarter of the national gross domestic product, to the U.S. because they simply cannot cope. There have been about 460 murders since a violent crime upsurge became noticeable in 2002. Before then, 50 murders a year made headlines.

Edwin Carrington, secretary-general of the 15-nation Caribbean Community, which is headquartered in Guyana, says violent crime is becoming a major scourge in the Caribbean as he commented out on the minister’s death.

“The callous destruction of human life and the consequent suffering risks shredding us of our decency, civility, humanity and intrinsic Caribbean spirit,” Carrington said. “Such acts of violence have no place in the democratic culture of the region and undermine the political, economic and social stability of the countries of the Community.”

However, not everyone is pleased with the situation. Basdeo Panday, Trinidad’s former prime minister and himself just convicted by a court for failing to declare income stashed away in London to an integrity commission, worries that the white officers might not fit in so easily.

“Suppose they try to arrest someone for a crime and the citizen mistakes him for a tourist,” he asked, pointing out that the issue of foreign officers on local forces has to be carefully handled to avoid alienation of serving officers.

Panday said recently that the fact that British police officers had to be dispatched to Trinidad “was a slap in the face for us as a country. If this is going to be a pattern, then we need to hire foreigners to run the entire country because the government is incompetent,” he said.

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