It’s been four months since the police made a significant drug bust at Ian Fleming International Airport in St Mary, and up to the time of writing this blog, the police is yet to make an arrest. However, Deputy Commissioner of Police Fitz Bailey told journalists attending the JCF monthly press briefing on Tuesday, February 7, 2023, “legal issues” are being ironed out, and arrests are expected soon.
Something tells me the DCP is fibbing or grandstanding. He needs a better answer. Imagine seizing all this contraband and an airplane. And no one has been taken into custody after four months. Yet, you have been telling the public that the investigation is ongoing. Why is it taking so long to make an arrest? Is it because there are two different sets of laws in Jamaica? Or is it because the culprit has connections in high places? We are not buying your story, so get your act together.
Last September, our police department boastfully announced that its special forces officers seized a large quantity of cocaine at the Boscobel airport valued at approximately $3.7 billion. The police confiscated the contraband during an operation that involved intelligence support from United States law enforcement agencies. But when a journalist asked DCP Bailey whether the police made any arrests in the four-month-old case, he said the following.
“We have been working with our international partners. Some legal issues are being addressed between [them] and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. We have also made some applications, and I will say this, people will be arrested and charged in respect of that matter,” Bailey said during Tuesday’s Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) press conference.
DCP Fitz Bailey
Still, he declined to comment on the legal issues and whether they relate to extradition matters.
There is no doubt that Jamaica is a trans-shipment point for narcotics trafficking by air and sea. Because we are at a strategic location in the Caribbean, but for some reason, we seize a lot of contraband, but nobody is getting arrested. And when we asked why this is so, our law enforcement officers give long speeches with empty words.
Why bother telling us when you make the seizures if you are not going to make any arrests?