I have never had reason to believe that any parts of my privacy have ever been invaded via the use of technology, as in the tapping of my telephone. However, I am now in a position to tell you that I have had my private parts invaded by the use of technology.It happened on Friday morning at Boston’s Logan International Airport as two grands and I were making our way to board a flight to Miami to hook up with another to Barbados. Getting back home was never so urgent as I had had my fill of a week of murderous 100°F days, which brought back dehydrating memories of visits to the Dead Sea in Israel and Las Vegas in the Nevada Desert where the average temperature at this time of the year is more than 102 degrees.Having collected my boarding pass, I entered the Customs area for the necessary security checks that come before being allowed into the departure area. I have been in those parts quite a few times since 9/11, so I am accustomed to the routine. While that’s happening, an officer invites you to walk through the other scanner that sends off an alarm if it detects any metal on your body.Friday morning was quite different. For when I thought I was being directed to the usual scanner that detects any metal in your clothing or on your body, a tall, thin security man who brought to mind Shakespeare’s immortal line in Julius Caesar – “Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look” ordered me to take everything out of my pockets including money and paper. That baffled me because I had never known money or paper to be considered dangerous objects.With all the contents clutched in my hand, “Cassius” directed me to something I had never seen before in an airport – a mat on which three sets of feet were imprinted. Two were in the normal direction while the third was at a right angle to the left. I had to stand in the first set, then step forward into the second and then into the third until I was almost touching a sheet of dark material in front of me. There, another officer told me to stand erect, place both hands touching above my head and “don’t move”.It was only at this point that, like a bolt out of the blue, it hit me: I was actually inside one of those new, controversial airport full-body scanners which scan right through your clothing and produce an image of your entire naked body in 3-D to screening officers on the other side.I, therefore, half hoped mine was a female screening officer, for the thought of a man examining my naked private parts for explosives and other dangerous items sent the blood to my head. That was unfortunate because I so badly wanted it to head in the other direction in order to rise up the African in me and make that officer feel ashamed of his own extra little finger.But the more humiliated, frustrated and angry I became as I stood there, the more the African in me turned into nothing but a little pygmy until I could all but hear those screening officers laughing their heads off at this black man who appeared rather Chinese privately.Twelve hours later at Grantley Adams International, another Cassius of a Customs officer ordered my Red Cap to an examination position where the female officer was replaced by a male stretching white rubber gloves over his hands. Fortunately, it was only to rummage through the contents of the bags.
 Al Gilkes heads a public relations firm.

It is the national institutions which form the genius, the character, the tastes, and the morals of a people, which make them themselves and not another people, which inspire them with that ardent love of fatherland based upon ineradicable habits.” – RosseauI was deeply impressed that Commissioner of Police Darwin Dottin told the passing out parade at the Regional Police Training Centre that he did not want to see Barbados follow some other Caricom states and appoint an expatriate as commissioner.He made the significant point that there has been a correlation between the replacement of commissioners and growing crime levels and “it has been quite noticeable that in some instances the frequent search for leaders has led to the employment of people who are, in the most part, expatriates”.He also said: “I am of the view that it is unreasonable and perhaps unfair to employ people, place them in positions of leadership, and then attach unrealistic expectations to their performance. I firmly believe that we must strenuously avoid such an approach. Indeed what is required in the current circumstances is a commitment to upgrade and strengthen our institutions.”In a culture where public servants are afraid to speak their minds, I commend the commissioner for his bold, forthright comments. For the benefit of the talk show host who said he did not understand what the commissioner meant by expatriate, a word in everyday usage, I interpreted it to mean a non-national, someone from outside the borders of a particular host country.The commissioner captured the strong patriotic attitudes and attributes with which we have been inculcated and endowed, and which have helped to liberate us from the colonial thinking which still keeps some sovereign Caricom states looking out to metropolitan capitals rather than within their own borders. It is hardly coincidental that these same countries are the ones which continue to embrace the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom as their final appellate jurisdiction even when that court is complaining that too much of its time is taken up with Caribbean cases, recommending gratuitously that they support their own functioning Caribbean Court of Justice.The commissioner’s comments came within days of the Government of Trinidad and Tobago appointing a Canadian national to be its new commissioner. It is a sad reflection on the progress of that country, which became independent in 1962, that it has to look north to the white Commonwealth in 2010 for its top cop. What will this do to such key criteria as loyalty, pride and national honour within the ranks? Coming in the wake of the infamous Canadian-headed UDECOTT shenanigans, which contributed substantially to the downfall of the Manning administration, Canadians are unlikely to be the flavour of the times in Port-of-Spain. How come, in a sophisticated and prosperous society with a UWI campus, there was an absence of proper succession planning in this vital area of peace-keeping and security? It is a sociological fact that the internal functioning of an organisation is strongly conditioned by external circumstances, such as the environment within which it operates. It will be instructive observing key factors like group loyalty, personal gratification, professional advancement and recruitment in the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service in the immediate future. The portents are hardly propitious.  Crime and security were major concerns in the May elections. A natural corollary of stable political authority is stable police authority and public confidence in the national security agencies which are major drivers in the thrust for national modernisation and rapid economic growth and development in the richest and most technologically driven Caricom state.Adding to the overall instability and running parallel with the appointment of an expatriate commissioner is the loud public spat between the attorney general and acting commissioner of police over who has jurisdiction for the security of the collapsed church at Guanapo Heights which was allegedly linked to Patrick Manning and his spiritual adviser during the election campaign.It says a lot about the Barbados Police Force that following the appointment of the first black commissioner, Mr Girwood Springer in 1972, a number of officers understood that colonialism stifled the emergence of a mass-based higher educated class and prepared themselves academically for the top ranks of our post-colonial force. Hence commissioners Durant, Watson and Dottin are attorneys-at-law.  When Commissioner Dottin looks around the Caribbean, he must feel justifiably proud that not only are his senior ranks Bajan to the bone, but there is no public squabbling between his men and the political class. In St Lucia the substantive commissioner was removed as crime skyrocketed and given a desk job in the prime minister’s office. He has never taken it up, remaining out on “sick leave”.In Antigua and Barbuda’s top ranks of the force are retired Canadian officers. In Jamaica, former commissioner Rear Admiral Lewin has launched a loud tirade against the government, making the very serious allegation that senior members of the Bruce Golding government had tipped off Christopher “Dudus” Coke when preparations for his extradition were imminent. It is noteworthy that in Jamaica though the commissioner is indigenous, three deputies are expatriates. Yet the crime rate has grown exponentially and on a per-capita basis that country has more murders per year than any other anywhere. Latest reports indicate that though the state of emergency has caused a fall-off in the metropolitan area, the dons have shifted their operations elsewhere.So those who delight in tearing down Commissioner Dottin and the force, we can proudly join him in saying not ’bout hey!
 Peter Simmons, a social scientist, is a former diplomat.