By RICARDO WELLS

Tribune Staff Reporter

rwells@tribunemedia.net

LAW enforcement officers have more incentives to look the other way, according to former Royal Bahamas Police Force Assistant Commissioner Paul Thompson, who yesterday recommended “honest officers” be paid bonuses for turning down bribes.

Mr Thompson made the suggestion during an appearance on The Guardian Radio talk show, Real Talk Live with guest-host Howard Grant, insisting local law enforcement officers are being offered substantial bribes to compromise their posts.

Responding to a caller who raised concerns with the level of corruption in which present-day enforcement officers are involved, Mr Thompson said that he, on several occasions, recommended to a former Police Commissioner that officers be paid for every bribe he or she turned down.

He said: “I recommended when I was on the force, the Commissioner disagreed, if somebody hands a police officer a bribe of $1,000 to let them get away with something; the police officer arrests the man…”

The host interjected: “And takes the bribe?”

Mr Thompson responded: “No. He arrests him. He arrests him with the bribe. I am saying the force should reward that police officer.”

The host again interjected: “With $1,000 themselves?”

Mr Thompson responded: “(Yes), that would encourage police officers to continue to do well. People would be scared, you’d be scared.”

In a later interview with The Tribune, Mr Thompson added: “It’s just commonsense, Here we have officers who are being offered these bribes, in some cases every day. How long before you think it would be before that man would look at it and say, they paying me just as much or more for less than a day’s work?”

He continued: “When I was on the force, we had this officer down in San Salvador, he was working there for many years and he had applied for a vacation. We sent a younger police who was working his way up the chain down there to hold on for him.”

“In no time he found himself in a spot where he was given a gold Rolex watch and $2,000 in cash to allow two Colombians and an American to fly a plane into the airport late at night.

“That young officer, still being relatively new and unquestioning in his duty, tried day after day for a while to get to me. He didn’t trust the phones because he thought the switch-board operator was in on the scheme.

“He finally got to me and told me about the scheme. We brought him to Nassau, he showed us the watch and the cash and told us everything. We were able to set-up a sting and catch those involved,” he said.

Mr Thompson told The Tribune that almost all of the country’s major law enforcement agencies are rife with stories like that.

Mr Thompson asserted that it is unconscionable to expect officers to constantly say ‘no’ in a society built on financial gain.

“When I presented the idea the first time, I was told it would set a bad precedent. Look at where we are at now,” Mr Thompson said.

“Everywhere you look, there is something untoward happening. If police officers are given an incentive to do the right thing, they would do it. I’m not talking about big money, maybe a percentage of what they were offered. I’m talking about some money in their hands as a way of saying ‘thank you for remaining true to us’. It would encourage them to do the right thing.

“I see it as cutting out corruption. I see it as rewarding our hard-working men and women and telling them ‘thank you’.

“If this was implemented today, tomorrow we’d have more tickets written up, more criminals turned in,” Mr Thompson claimed.