By Lloyd Williams, Senior Associate EditorIf we are not careful in this country, we are going to run the risk of underestimating the nature of the threat to the rule of law posed by the international cocaine syndicates and their local connections, especially in law enforcement.
According to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, "These traffickers model their operations after international terrorist groups. They maintain tight control of their workers through highly compartmentalised cell structures that separate production, shipment, distribution, money laundering, communications, security and recruitment.
"Traffickers have at their disposal the most technologically advanced airplanes, boats, vehicles, radars, communications equipment, and weapons that money can buy. They have also established vast counter-intelligence capabilities and transportation networks.
"Today's international criminal organisations pose a greater challenge to law enforcement than any previous criminal group in our history. While there are numerous characteristics that these international groups have in common with traditional organized crime - their penchant for violence and their reliance on corruption and intimidation as tools of their business - their sheer power, influence, and sophistication put them in a category by themselves. Whereas traditional Mafia families would corrupt officers and judges, today's international drug organisations corrupt entire institutions of Government."
Jamaican equal
These international drug gangs, operating in Jamaica, are no less active, no less powerful, no less determined to bribe and intimidate and murder to have their way.
Amid the charges of drug dealing, it is important to remember that as Sterling Johnson, the former New York City special prosecutor likes to to say, "We all have reputations."
And we all know what these reputations are. We as journalists, know who among our colleagues are reliable or who exaggerate; who are incorrigible late-comers, who can be confided in, or who are venal.
From the day a policeman takes money for escorting a shipment of ganja, or for changing his testimony, or takes money from cocaine dealers - maybe for no particular reason - everybody knows about it.
Everyone knows that he can be bought. You might not be able to prove it in a court of law, but the word goes out that he is corrupt.
He might not say how much he has collected, but invariably, the bribers boast about the payouts and who they were made to and who they have in the palm of their hands. What great connections they have. Who their friends are.
Dreaded decision
But there is one thing we should know - and always remember. It is this: the decision that somebody makes in Kingston to deal in Colombian cocaine - or cocaine from anywhere else - or to smoke "crack" is much more than a decision about how much money he is going to make or the "x" minutes of pleasure the "crack" will give him.
By dealing in cocaine or smoking "crack" they are also buying into everything else that go with the cocaine trade - from the cultural and environmental destruction that is going on in the Andean region to facilitate the cultivation of the coca plant to the bribery and intimidation and violence and murder that grip hitherto peaceful Jamaican streets and neighbourhoods.
They buy into the corruption that goes on in Colombia and Jamaica; the murderous activities of the criminal elements involved in the cocaine trade.
They have to understand the implications of those seemingly simple decisions, and that they can't simply just divorce themselves from all that is involved in the cocaine trade.
