Is it all corruption in high places ?

granca · #1 11-04-2009, 04:05 PM

The longer I live here (5 years now) the less I understand so many things.
(1) I did refer in an earlier thread to a niece by marriage who was stabbed by two men on the instructions of her aunt. Further evidence has been found and the woman in question has had a warrant for her arrest issued. She however lives in a city some 3 hours distant by road. The local police are prepared to act on the warrant but insist that she is transferred to the warrant issuing authorities. BUT the victim has to pay the transport costs of the accused plus accompanying police officer. 16 year old girls don't have that kind of money. Nearly 70 years of living in the UK has me expecting different actions from the police. Ha , ha, ha, this is the RepDom.
(2) Today Dominican workers in Las Terrenas have made a demonstration to protest against the lack of work for them. They state that the majority of jobs are being given to immigrants. With the honorable exception of our Ayuntamento who appear to have a policy of local jobs for local citizens many employers take on immigrant labour because they are cheaper, even though many of them are illegal immigrants. The government appears to be doing very little even nothing to right this wrong being so busy plotting their own increased salaries, expenses and jobs for other members of their extended families. Lord Leonel appears to do nothing about it. A solution either locally or nationally which would not be very costly would be to appoint say locally 6, what I would call Special Constables. who have the right to demand production of a valid Cedula or other proof of residency with right to work. Those without are placed on a special bus with guards and in the case of immigrants from other parts of Hispaniola shipped back to their country forthwith. The increase in job opportunities to Dominicans would be a tremendous moral and well being action. Perhaps also then the profits being taken out of this country by non Dominican employers would also be reduced.

I am but a blanco but I love this island and the Dominicans I know, some of whom are good friends but it upsets me to see these wrongs which really should not be and have no need to be.

Rant over, would that it could do some good!

windeguy · #2 11-04-2009, 04:22 PM

It does seem, sadly, that you have learned well.

Lambada · #3 11-04-2009, 05:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by granca

BUT the victim has to pay the transport costs of the accused plus accompanying police officer. 16 year old girls don't have that kind of money.

Sad to say that is quite normal for here. And even after the court appearance if there is no police transport available/with fuel then the victim might be expected to foot the bill. The 10 year old daughter of friends of ours was assaulted by a young man; in order to appear at the court in Puerto Plata, they were expected to drive the accused in their car with their daughter (!) or pay a taxi for him & accompanying police officer. After the appearance & finding of guilt, the young man was going into custody and again parents of the victim were expected to drive him to the downtown holding cell. It didn't happen because BushBaby drove him instead, put him in the back of his car with the officer & insisted cuffs were kept firmly on. And probably terrified the kid more than the Court did by barking orders at him in an extremely stern fashion..............

It's partly a resource thing but it's also to do with expectations and professional standards and the UK Home Office has been involved in training initiatives out here to introduce different standards one of which is never expecting perp and victim to travel in the same transport nor holding victim responsible for law enforcement. We hope that in time it will prove fruitful. In the meanwhile, granca, are there any voluntary organisations in your niece's area which would help with this sort of thing?

DRNED · #4 11-04-2009, 05:30 PM

This sounds crazy and really quite primitive in terms of understanding the trauma victims can go through. It does seem the more I look into the country the less attractive it becomes in terms of why I would want to live in it. I get no feeling of security at all, infact quite the oposite, it seems damn right dangerous if you happen to be in the wrong place or expect protection from those paid to do so.
I'm quite sure that the majority of tourists visiting the DR would not if they took the time to read some of the things I have been reading, if they knew how volnerable they really were if they were in the wrong place at the wrong time and got mixed up in something they couldn't understand.
It must have massive plus sides for people to want to move there permanently. I'd love to see the plus sides to all this negativity to bring the balance of why people are moving there from perfectly safe and modern living environments.

windeguy · #5 11-04-2009, 05:42 PM

DRNED, you cannot expect this country to live up to the standards that you would set for North America or Europe. What you have to do is learn to work around the standards that do exist.

Keep in mind that most of the negative issues you read about are rare and therefor newsworthy.

DRNED · #6 11-04-2009, 06:00 PM

I really hope they are rare, I'm beginning to feel really uncomfortable with all this. I'm going to support my partner with work commitments, I really don't want to be part of the news in any way. Are foreigners regularly victims in Santo Domingo? For me it is very uncomfortable not to have a police force there to protect me if I need protected, and it doesn't look like I can rely on that. I feel like I should be packing bullet proof vests and hiring security, lol.

Lambada · #7 11-04-2009, 06:12 PM

DRNED, you almost have to live it to understand it. granca has lived it, so he is approaching it in a different way to you. You become pretty self-sufficient, living here. You make judgements as to when to involve law enforcement and when not to and particularly you make judgements about HOW you do this viz. when it is a good idea to use an influential intermediary etc. It is pretty much the case that provided you keep your nose clean you will have little interaction with law enforcement who btw are paid peanuts in the DR. And you don't expect protection here, there is no 'entitlement' to such as compared with say, US or Europe. But equally there is nothing to stop you organising your own should you need it. Far more freedom than those 'perfectly safe & modern living environments' wherever they might be.........

It's no bad thing to feel a little uncomfortable to start with, because this will up your sense of awareness & street smarts. In time, it'll all become second nature.

MikeFisher · #8 11-06-2009, 09:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lambada

DRNED, you almost have to live it to understand it. granca has lived it, so he is approaching it in a different way to you. You become pretty self-sufficient, living here. You make judgements as to when to involve law enforcement and when not to and particularly you make judgements about HOW you do this viz. when it is a good idea to use an influential intermediary etc. It is pretty much the case that provided you keep your nose clean you will have little interaction with law enforcement who btw are paid peanuts in the DR. And you don't expect protection here, there is no 'entitlement' to such as compared with say, US or Europe. But equally there is nothing to stop you organising your own should you need it. Far more freedom than those 'perfectly safe & modern living environments' wherever they might be.........

It's no bad thing to feel a little uncomfortable to start with, because this will up your sense of awareness & street smarts. In time, it'll all become second nature.

absolutely agreement on all points, Ginnie.
and that by the prior poster mentioned perfectly safe at home place does sure not exists.
in the northe american or western european countries people get mugged, shot robbed and raped on daily/hourly/minute bases,
so that perfectly safe environment sure is not located there.
there are ocassions on which you ask for help at the authorities,
and there are things where you get help from the neighbourhood.
to be part of the neighbourhood means you first need to become part of the country/people of the area where you live/work.
the ones who gate themselves off from the rest of their surroundings are the ones who will always get ripped of from both, the neighbourhood and the authorities.
and Granca is right on his rant,
that "responsibility" of the victim for transfer etc of the accused offender is something which urgently needs to be resolved.
handcuff the gangsters and sit them in a public bus for the transfer with a police escort aside, make a law that those officers and their cuffs can travel for free on such, the officers get anyways paid a monthly salary, so no extra costs involved.
i hope the people mentioned by Lambada get some positive movement on their attempts to change that, it would be a big step forward to make all people equal in front of the law.
til now only who has the money to transport an accused one to court can accuse somebody, others keep just their mouths shut or it would cost them their money just to try to get justice.
Mike

mountainannie · #9 11-06-2009, 10:15 PM

I did want to chime in a bit with the few experiences that I have had in the Capital.. only to say that here.. where half of the population lives, I have a much better sense of security. I have seen two operations of the legal system.. not the criminal system, I will admit, well only tangently, both restraining orders, one through mediation through the special gender court which is set up for special gender based offenses and the victim, plus lawyer if there is one, goes into the magistrate, who listens, then summons the offender who has been also summoned, tries to get them sit in the same room .. in this case the victim would not.. the magistrate (perhaps not the precise legally correct word) decides what is going to happen.. is the case going to court, will there be a restraining order, will someone go to criminal court or what. all with a lot of mellow purple candle stuff.... Another with issuing a restraining order.. you hire someone who is an officer of the court who does not just serve the paper but goes and finds the person, reads the complaint, and then certifies that it was understood. This I suppose because so many people would not understand.

Just to say that the outlaying regions.. the beach areas where a lot of the expats have chosen to settle, are not big Centers, Puerto Plata probably being the exception.. do not have the sort of economic activity that the cities have and so it is a bit more a frontier...LT is DEFINITELY a frontier town,--- and they just do not have the resources or the training or any of the stuff that we have here...

Not that I am an expert but just to say that I think that there are wide variations across the country and we certainly should not make judgements about the entire country from things that happen up in some areas-

granca · #10 11-07-2009, 06:35 PM

Update on the stabbing. The aunt of the victim telephoned the lawyer in San Pedro de Macoris who told her to go back to the police station and whilst there to telephone him so that he could speak to the LT Police Chief and tell him that what they were trying to do was against the law. As a result the LT Police arrested the accused and brought her back to LT police station. Hot on her heels came her husband and his lawyer. Here's the bit that brought home to me the different ways of doing things. The accused, her husband (a blanco like me but from another country), her husbands lawyer and a police officer all piled into the husbands vehicle and they set off for San P. We await the next update!