Submitted by Observing

Boat captain Walter Prescod walked free. I expected it. The fact that everyone else also expected it says something about where we are.

Let’s walk it back a bit.

On 23 July 2018, authorities found 121.4 kilogrammes of cannabis aboard the Ecstasy, a Goddard Enterprises yacht that had returned from Grenada.
Now look at who was on it. Charles Herbert, then chairman of Goddard Enterprises. Christopher Rogers, a director of the company and captain of the yacht. And Walter Prescod, a sailor. All three men were charged.

• Charles Herbert. The prosecution dropped his charges in June 2019, citing insufficient evidence. He became a state’s witness.
• Christopher Rogers. A magistrate sent him and Prescod to stand trial in February 2020. The High Court set aside Rogers’s committal in 2023 after ruling that a provision of the drug law infringed the presumption of innocence. He became a state’s witness.
• Walter Prescod. He stood trial alone. On 9 November 2026, a jury acquitted him on all three charges.

The State called the chairman and the captain as its witnesses at the sailor’s trial. Both said they knew nothing about the drugs. Rogers said he was told by his bosses to accept responsibility. All three walked free. We talk about equal justice, then expect people to take the system on faith when it changes course. We watched as eight years passed between the seizure, the release of one and the obvious acquittal of the others. The guys on the block and those remanded for a spliff or two were watching too. I wonder what they made of it.

Do you remember Welches Beach in Christ Church? February 2025. Police seized cannabis with an estimated street value of BDS$4.6 million. Then came the cocaine bust on 2 November. More than half a tonne of suspected cocaine, with an estimated street value of nearly BDS$27 million. The Ecstacy’s drugs were estimated at nearly 3 million.

Now think about the money it takes to buy and trasport drugs in those quantities. The capital and backing needed to accept the risk and loss of confiscation. Show me the average man who has that kind of capital up front. I doubt you’ll find him. So, the question is, how far up the chain are we really looking?

The guns. The drugs. The big seizures. We talk about them for a few days, then go on like nothing happenned. Just another normal day in Buhbados. And who suffers?

The children using the drugs. The small fish who takes the risks? The youngsters on the new robbing spree? All to benefit someone further up the chain who could clearly care less about them or country.

I confess. I grew up in a drug hole. I saw people get stabbed. I’ve held a rusty, unlicensed guns. I’ve been around the good, the bad and the ugly. But I grew up. And I hoped for better. For my children, for my grandchildren and for my country of birth. I’ve seen how this story starts, and I know first-hand how it ends. No one should expect perfection, but when we apathetically accept this current state as normal, then, our collective fate is really up to us.

One day we’ll wake up and ask where this rot starts. We may hear some things we’d rather leave alone, and about people that we would be too afraid to talk about.

But by then it will be too late, and we may have very little idea what to do about it.

And one thing is for sure. Small or big, rich or poor, Black, white or Indian, we will all feel it.

God bless Bim.