The top story of the week stoked by the local media is that a newspaper snagged a video which was circulating on Facebook for over a month and posted a blurred image of two teens having sex in a classroom full in the knowledge they were being video recorded. BU has no doubt the public outcry provoked by this incident like all the others before will pass with nothing material done to address the factors at the root of juvenile and parental delinquency in our society. It must be said that the newspaper at the centre of the incident must have experienced a spike in sales.
This is one week since the Police Service Commission Report to Retire Commissioner Darwin Dottin was released by BU and ignored by traditional media. How can anyone take the local media and the bevy of talk show hosts seriously when in one breath they pontificate about the moral issue emanating from the sex video, and rightly so, but ignore an issue which attacks a key plank in our governance system. What separates Barbados from the rest has been our ability to maintain law and order on our little island. Despite all of our challenges Barbadians have always prided themselves in being a peaceful and law abiding nation.
While Barbados was consumed this week by the sex video saga the global media reacted to news that the USA (Big Brother) hacked the phones of prominent persons across the globe. All part of adhering to national security. And in Britain there was the news that the long awaited trial of Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson is set to begin, a case where two journalists are alleged to have hacked the phone records of members of parliament, members of the royal family and others – Phone hacking: Court told of tabloids’ ‘decade of deceit.
BU is convinced there is a lot more to the story of Commissioner of Police Darwin Dottin and his involvement with wiretapping activities in Barbados. While the Police Service Commission (PSC) had the option to recommend to the Governor General the suspension of Dottin, rather than his removal from office for misconduct which would have involved a commission of Inquiry (COI), the PSC has been delinquent in the view of BU. It should have felt obligated to place its evidence before the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Attorney General and request that Dottin be criminally prosecuted. Such an approach would not have involved an expensive and challenging COI, merely the arrest and arraignment of Dottin and his trial on criminal charges. As far as BU is aware there is no law which gives a Commissioner of Police immunity from criminal prosecution. The DPP would have examined the evidence, determined whether there is sufficient to charge the goodly gentleman instructing and charge and arraign him and bind him over for trial. This idea of proceeding against Dottin to preserve his pension is ludicrous.
On behalf of the the late Inspector Anderson Bowen’s, BU pledges to ventilate this matter until the truth is known. The local media and cohorts can continue to do what it does best, pander to the advertisers.
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