SSP Bailey's mouthful of madness and mischief

We don't know in whose Cabinet Senior Superintendent Fitz Bailey sits, but effort might have addled his brain and conditioned him to crooked thinking.

That seems the most likely explanation for Mr Bailey's claim on Monday, without a shred of evidence, that gay men are now the main perpetrators - upwards of 80 per cent - of organised crime in Jamaica, particularly in the lottery scam. We wonder whether Mr Bailey asks about sexual orientation every time he books a criminal suspect, and we question how he proves the veracity of that claim, as well as what bearing sexual orientation has on the proneness to criminal intent and involvement.

If Mr Bailey's observation was not so seriously dangerous, you might have just considered him funnily silly. The problem, though, is the potential effect of Mr Bailey's ludicrous statement.

A grave possibility is that Mr Bailey will have stoked homophobic rage, leading to assaults on presumed gay males on the assumption that they, even on the flimsiest of evidence, were responsible for this or that crime.

We believe that Mr Bailey is at his most perspicacious when he keeps his mouth shut.

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