The Jamaican police has over the years, been criticized for being corrupt and ineffective.

They have been accused of murdering innocent civilians and jailing the wrong people who end up spending years in prison primarily on the back of weak and prejudiced investigations; and generally, many in this nation believe the Jamaican police could not catch a criminal even if he was living in front of a police station.

Arrested a goat

Well, I say thank God for small mercies because it could have been worse. Compared to the police in some parts of the world, our cops look like geniuses. Take the police in Kiwara State in Nigeria, for example, who this week arrested a goat on a charge of attempting to steal a Mazda 323.

I kid you not.

The goat, they believe, is actually a man who transformed; morphed into a goat in a bid to escape the long arm of the law. Google it if you doubt my words.

Reports coming out of Kiwara state said some vigilantes saw some men attempting to steal a car. As the vigilantes pursued the suspects, one of the men fled while the other turned into a goat. At least, that is what the police are reporting.

In custody

The police spokesman's statement is what cracks me up. "We cannot confirm the story, but we have the goat in custody," he said. "We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat."

If I was reporting on that story I would have asked him then and there just how he and the police planned to prove that a human can turn into a goat. It's mind-numbing that in this day and age these things can actually happen.

Straight face

Can you imagine Renato Adams or better yet, Rear Admiral Hardly Lewin trying to sell this story to local media? Colonel MacMillan would have just fallen dead right then and there.

And even if they were successful, can you imagine Dorraine Samuels or Kerlyn Brown reading this on the nightly news with a straight face? I don't even think any reporter here would file such a story, even if it was true. Well... some would.

The thing is, I don't think it would even have come to that. If such a thing was even possible - a man turning into a goat - can you imagine how many police stations would have curried goat on their menu every day?

Idiocy

What is scarier still is if our local police could get away with this kind of idiocy, can you imagine how many goats would currently be incarcerated inside the Tower Street and Spanish Town facilities?

Come to think of it, with the state of crime right now if the Government could get away with it, they wouldn't mind too much if the police were arresting goats believed to be criminals with extraordinary powers. It would certainly be cheaper to feed them. Gra** grows everywhere.

Ridiculous

And while I am on the subject of idiocy, what is all the hullabaloo over Prime Minister Golding getting a new car? It's just *lo**y ridiculous. The man is the prime minister for God's sake. Is he supposed to drive around in a broke-down 12-year-old Volvo, just because some people think with their butts and believe that he shouldn't be acquiring a new vehicle or choose instead to drive around in a Toyota Corolla?

Who I blame for this is the previous administration. They were the ones who got more than 30 brand new BMWs at the end of the ICC World Cup of Cricket two years ago and for some inexplicable reason did not retain one for the Prime Minister. That is how short-sighted they were, or blinded by greed; or both.