Reverse Man and Mad Macaw May 25
He is back with a vengeance. The giant scarlet macaw has been released from custody. Before Easter, numerous assault complaints from the school resulted in the bird’s incarceration by the owner, but apparently he has been pardoned. This is a mistake.
Ray, as he occasionally calls himself, is quite mad. He has been spoiled rotten by his curiosity. Humans see a rainbow bird that speaks words, and they imagine cartoon fantasy. Strangers can be so giving that he takes liberties. Today he landed on the shoulders of a fifth-grader during recess, biting the boy’s hair and scratching skin with an opposable thumb. Several feathers were left as evidence of the altercation.
I catch sight of the ruffled macaw, perched outside my lab window, just inches from full bottles of muriatic acid and oil of vitriol. If his psychedelic plumage is any indication, this bird is tripping. He looks disheveled and mangy, but it cannot be attributed to neglect. If anything, Ray suffers from too much attention. Mass affection has created a monster.
Oui Foute! Oui Papa! What madness!
“The streets know who he is and say he is a man that can’t be caught.“
This is what the streets reportedly said, according to a Newsday “police source,“ suggesting that some kind of superhero intervention may be required. The newspapers have been referring to “Reverse Man“ for weeks, a mysterious driver who has been backing a sedan at high speeds around the Queens Park Savannah and Morne Coco Road. Boldly, recklessly, and with impunity, car and driver have become darlings of social media and a menace to anyone moving forward.
“He may be too difficult to get hold of, even in reverse,“ the streets add, on the printed page.
Another article offers a reason for the mayhem: Police are evidently incompetent. Over half of those who applied for their first promotion last year, to corporal, failed the written test. Parliament recommends a hiring freeze and reexamination of recruitment strategies, following the release of a sobering report from the Joint Select Committee on National Security (JSCNS) and the Police Manpower Audit Committee (PMAC).
The JSC Report included the PMAC Report’s findings that 40 per cent of police officers think corruption exists in the police service and 96 per cent of officers themselves thought the public had little or no confidence in the TTPS, the latter comprising 14 per cent saying “no confidence at all,” 47 per cent saying “very low” and 35 per cent saying “low.” No number was assigned to the officers who refused to participate in the poll, for fear of retribution. They are paid so little that only the poor and uneducated need apply, and so the vicious loop of corruption and incompetence continues.
Meanwhile, in Caribbean Gotham, Reverse Man and Mad Macaw remain at large. I tend to make Port of Spain out to be an odd place, even crazy, but I need to keep perspective—my own president just called himself an “extremely stable genius,“ in print.