Dear Editor,
The first day my mother saw me dressed in uniform getting ready to go to work,
she gave me God's blessing and told me that I must always remember that anytime, anything happen to anybody anywhere, some mother's belly hurt. She said be fair to the people and treat them right.
My Father was the philosopher, so coming from my mother that registered with me until today. All kinds of examples were given to us in the academy, but that one hit home. When I got home in the afternoon after work, and asked her about what she had told me in the morning, she explained that when positive things happen, especially with police people, it is noticed, but soon forgotten. On the contrary, when something negative happens people will always remember that and continue to comment about it.
It is expected for people involved in policing to do the right thing, so doing the right thing would be considered normal. A whole lot of other people do negative things but that will go unnoticed. Whereas once people in policing mess up, it becomes the biggest offense.
I read the results of the court case against the ex-head of VDSM and got the impression as if he was the biggest murderer that Sint Maarten has ever known. The person who supplied them with a lot of vital information. One would think that he had embezzled millions of dollars. If memory serves me well, the amount involved in reality is about seventy-five percent less than he was accused of embezzling, and that those who were supposed to know did the Pilate thing. With the little experience that I have in life and the forty one years in law enforcement.
I know that there are certain standards of procedures, and, security of self, is one. I also know that a sense of integrity is another. I do not know anything about the case other than following it in the papers. But from the onset I knew that security to those involved was laid aside for politics. I cannot remember any such an office being exposed to the public.
When I saw the ribbon cutting in the papers, I informed about it, and I was told that is how they wanted it. That already to me was a no-no. Having an idea how finances for that department is handled, and in this case with no one to secure checks and balances, I told myself the stick is right there to beat that dog. By now we all know that fear and threat took place in prompting the ex-head of VDSM to take those decisions. Is that really fair?
But I must mention this. People in policing and government have always been at logger heads, and up to today there are still problems with salaries and promotions. I am still not sure of the real reason for going at the ex-head of VDSM. Was he railroaded? What would Donald Trump do in a case like this?
I do not think it is far-fetched to think in this manner, because my pension money is being used to bail out bad spenders of government money. The harbour deal, the new government building deal, and we are talking millions. Dubious deals of which we have not heard of anyone being arrested.
Not to talk about the causeway. The Causeway cost us an amount of which I as a taxpayer, a citizen and a voter am still waiting to see the figures, and we are not seeing any kind of returns from that investment. The casino's owed plenty and we only hear an amount of thirteen million. The ex-head of VDSM so-called unaccounted for amount was made to be almost seventy-five percent more than the real amount. And you know what, one mother said “I have to do this", and the other mother’s belly hurt.
Russell A. Simmons
