The Police.
Of all the institutions in Hayti, the police is certainly the worst conducted. There are regular commissaries employed under the prefects, but ordinary soldiers do the work of constables. In my time they went about the streets with a thick stick of heavy wood in their hands called a cocomacaque, and they used it in such a way as to confirm the remark that cruelty is an innate quality with the negro. Never did I see a Haytian of the upper classes step forward to remonstrate—probably he knew his countrymen too well—whilst the lower orders simply laughed and enjoyed the sight of punishment.
Every one arrested accused of a crime is immediately treated as if he were guilty, and the cocomacaque is brought to play on his head and shoulders. As an observer remarked, “In Hayti no prisoner has any right to be considered innocent.” A woman was arrested near my house accused of having killed the child of a neighbour from motives of jealousy. They said she was a loup garou, and as soon as the soldiers seized her they began to beat her. Before she reached the prison she was covered with wounds, and a relative who endeavoured to interfere shared the same fate.
One day, whilst at the American Consulate, I heard a disturbance outside. I took no notice at first, but presently looking out, saw the police raising a prostrate man. He had been insolent to his overseer, and a passing general ordered him to be taken to prison by the soldiers who were following him. They fell upon the man, and in a few moments he was a mass of bruises, and died before he reached his destination. A few weeks after, I saw a body of a negro lying near the same spot; this was that of a thief, on whom the police had executed summary justice with their clubs.
An English merchant saw two soldiers arrest a man accused of murder. As he resisted, they tied his feet together and dragged him along the streets, his head bumping against the stones. The Englishman remonstrated, but he was threatened with the same treatment. A negro arrested for stealing fowls had his arms bound behind him and a rope attached to one ankle, which was held by a policeman, while another kept close to the prisoner, beating him with his club, and as he darted forward to avoid a blow, the other would pull the rope, and the unfortunate accused would fall flat on his face. And all this done in public before the authorities, both civil and military, and no man raising his voice to stop such barbarous work! I have myself seen so many of these brutal scenes that I feel convinced that no account can be exaggerated.
As detectives these soldier-police are quite useless, and crime, unless openly committed, is rarely detected. Robbers have continued in their profession for years though perfectly well known, and no attempt has been made to capture them. There was one who was notorious for the impunity with which he had committed a long series of crimes. When he entered a house he intended to rob, he stripped, rubbed his body with oil, and crawled in, knife in hand. Unluckily for him, one night, being disturbed in his operations, he stabbed his assailant, who proved to be a Senator. It was all very well to rob and stab common people, but a Senator could not be thus treated with impunity; and the man, fearing no pursuit, was quietly captured in bed. The commissary of police, thinking that the fellow had had rope enough given him, and being sure that he would again escape from prison if sent there, had him taken out of town, and he was promptly shot, under pretence of having attempted to escape—la ley de fuga, as the Spaniards call it.
General Vil Lubin was, during the time of the Emperor Soulouque, in command of the arrondissement of Port-au-Prince; he proved efficient in his post, but he was a hard man, and one day ordered two soldiers to be beaten. Their comrades carried out the order so effectually that in a short time two bruised corpses were lying at the barrack door. Soulouque heard of it, and, furious at the treatment of two of his own guard, bitterly reproached Vil Lubin, and for months could not meet him without using the expression, “Rendez-moi mes soldats.” Yet how many hundreds met their death by his order! In both the civil and military administration brutality is the rule, not the exception.
There has been much talk of establishing a rural police, but nothing effective has come of it.
The Government rely for the detection of conspiracies more upon informers than on the police, and as they are to be found in all ranks, friendship is often used for the purpose of obtaining information. President Geffrard sometimes referred to conversations to which members of the diplomatic corps had been parties, and perhaps too often, as, on comparing notes, they were enabled to fix on their communicative friends, and were thus free to let the President hear their real opinion about his measures, only so far, however, as it suited their purpose. Under Soulouque the system was carried to a greater extent, and his suspicious mind made him treat as truth every assertion of a spy. One day an old beggar-woman, passing before the palace, asked alms of some officers who were conversing together; on being refused, she ran under the Emperor’s window and began to shout, “Emperor, they are conspiring against you!” and made so great a disturbance that the guard turned out. The officers were too happy to get rid of the old woman by giving her money; she went off laughing, with her hands full of notes.
Under Salnave and Domingue the spy system was much employed, and it appears likely that, under the present Government, it is rampant, if we may judge by the series of military executions which have marked this Presidency.
The jails, as might be expected in such a country, are filthy places. I have often visited that of Port-au-Prince; it is a cluster of low buildings, surrounded by a wall perhaps ten feet in height, so insecure that no European could be kept there a night except by his own good-will. The ordinary negro prisoner, however, has no enterprise, and, rather liking the lazy life, lies down to sleep out his sentence.
Prisoners condemned to death, and too often political suspects, are confined in cells, and are manacled to a bar running across the room. I looked into one, and saw five men fixed to the same bar. As I knew that there were only four condemned to death, I asked what was the crime of the fifth. “Oh, he is a military defaulter, and we did not know where else to put him.”
In President Geffrard’s time a little attention was paid to the cleanliness of the jails, but during Soulouque’s reign and after Geffrard’s time everything was neglected. A friend once visited the prison, to find nine negroes manacled to the same bar, lying naked on the floor on account of the stifling heat, and the jailer admitted that he had not freed them from the bar for above a week, nor had he thought of having the cell cleaned out. The horrible odour issuing from the place when the door was opened fully confirmed the latter assertion.
I knew a general, still living, who had been confined from political motives in one of these cells, I believe for seven years, and his manacles were only occasionally secretly removed by the jailer. Murderers serving out their sentences, thieves, unimportant political prisoners, imprisoned sailors, are all indiscriminately confined in regal rooms opening on a court, and receive their food from friends or relatives. Unhappy would be the wretch who had no one to care for him, as the pitiful allowance for the prisoners, irregularly paid, rarely if ever reaches them.
Female prisoners are confined in the same building, but their rooms open on a separate court. The wife of a revolutionary general was imprisoned there in 1869. She was for a long time kept in irons, but at length heed was given to our remonstrances, and her irons were removed. She was a handsome negress, and took the jailer’s fancy, who tried to violate her, but the powerful woman thrust him from her cell. He threatened vengeance; but a few nights after she escaped from prison, and fled to our Legation, where she remained over three months, and it required the vigorous remonstrances of Lord Clarendon to enable us to embark her for Jamaica. On the day that we did so, as we approached the wharf, we noticed a crowd of negroes assembling with the object of insulting their countrywoman, but on my giving my arm to the black lady, an old negro remarked in their jargon, “Consite specté negresse-çi-là” (“The Consul shows respect to that negress”), and allowed us to pass without a word. This lady was from Cap Haïtien, and I may add that she was the only refugee out of many hundreds that I can remember who ever showed any gratitude for the services rendered them.
All the members of the diplomatic corps, since the first acknowledgment of the independence of Hayti, have at various times attempted to persuade successive Governments to look to their prisons, but never with much result. The prisons are indeed thoroughly bad, as might be expected among such a people. The worst on the island, however, is probably at Puerto Plata, in the Dominican republic.
Murder is sometimes punished with death, but that punishment is generally reserved for political opponents. I remember an instance which is worth relating, as it displays the Haytian character in the form it assumes when excited by political passion. In the autumn of 1868, five merchants of the southern province were captured and brought to Port-au-Prince. As they were connected with members of the revolutionary party then in arms, the mob clamoured for their lives, and they were ordered by President Salnave, to be shot. As we knew that these men were perfectly innocent, the French, Spanish, and English representatives made an effort to save them, and called on the Foreign Minister to ask him to accompany us to the palace to see the President. We were told that he was ill in bed, and could not accompany us. We insisted upon seeing him, and found this functionary covered up and trembling, not with ague, but fear. We begged him to get up, but he obstinately refused, declaring he was too unwell. We could not waste further time, as the execution was to take place within an hour. So we left, but I could not refrain from saying to this bedridden gentleman, “In such times as these, sir, a Minister has no right to be ill.” He never forgave me.
We went to the palace, but were refused admittance, and only got back to the French Legation in time to see the five prisoners pass to execution. Presently one returned whom the President had pardoned.
When the procession arrived at the place of execution, there was a mob collected of several thousand spectators, principally ferocious negresses. A shout arose, “We were promised five! where is the fifth?” and the crowd closed in on the procession, with knives drawn and pistols ready. The cowardly officers replied, “The fifth is coming,” and sent word to President Salnave. He, unwilling to disappoint his most faithful followers, looked over the list of those in prison, and finding that there was a parricide, whom he had pardoned but the day before, ordered him to execution. In the meantime, the four others had been kept waiting, exposed to the insults of the people—particularly one prisoner, whose long white beard and hair and white skin made him particularly obnoxious.
The arrival of the fifth prisoner pacified the crowd. The five were clumsily shot, and then the spectators rushed in with their knives and mangled the bodies under every circumstance of obscenity. Such are the negresses when excited by political leaders, and such are evidently the most devoted followers of President Salomon, if we can place any faith in the accounts of the fearful atrocities perpetrated by them during the massacres of September 1883.
The chief of this ferocious band was a young negress who went by the name of Roi Petit Chout, to whom President Salnave gave a commission as general. She used to come in front of the Legation with some of her companions, knife in one hand and pistol in the other, and utter ferocious threats, on account of our having received some political refugees. These women were used as a high police to keep down disaffection, and horrible stories are told of the murders and cruelties practised by these wretches. When the revolution triumphed, Roi Petit Chout was arrested, but though murder could readily have been proved against her, she was soon restored to liberty.
As all the police department is most inefficiently paid, its members are generally open to bribes, and are accused of levying black-mail on the poorer inhabitants. During the time of Salnave they were unbridled in their savage acts, and every man they met in the streets, foreign or native, was liable to be seized and sent to the forts as a recruit. As regular police commissaries accompanied these groups, these arrestments were made in a spirit of wanton mischief; at other times it was to obtain a pecuniary recompense for their good-nature in letting a foreigner go.
To show how ordinary police affairs are managed in Hayti, I must give an account of an incident which occurred to the Spanish chargé d’affaires and myself. A dishonest servant forced open the window of our wine-cellar and stole eighteen dozen of claret, and then fled. We gave notice to the police, who were very energetic in taking up the case, and every now and then brought us information of their proceedings. At last they recovered some of the wine, and in triumph brought us two dozen and seven bottles. A few days passed, and a Haytian friend happening to breakfast with us, took up a claret bottle and saw the mark, “Château Giscours, De Luze, Bordeaux.” He laughed and said, “Now I understand a remark made by the Minister of the Interior, when he said what capital wine the English Minister imported.” On further inquiry, we found that the police had recovered fourteen dozen of our wine (the other four had been bought knowingly by our most intimate friend), and that they had divided eleven dozen and five bottles among various high officials. The only observation my colleague made was, “Quel pays!” but I felt inclined to agree with the people when they say of the officials, “Quel tas de voleurs!” The robber was afterwards arrested for another offence, and I could not but pity him, when I saw him tied, bleeding and stumbling under the blows of a policeman’s club.
During the siege of Port-au-Prince in the civil war (1868) my French and Spanish colleagues and I were walking through the town, when we were startled by the sound of firing in the next street. On arriving at the spot, we found that the police had arrested a young Frenchman. As he objected that he was a foreigner and not liable to conscription, a crowd soon assembled, and a follower of Roi Petit Chout’s band, a ferocious negro, raised his carbine and shot the lad through the body, and my French colleague had barely time to catch his last words before he expired.
Nothing that the French representative could say had any effect on the Haytian Government; the murderer was promoted to be a sergeant, and sent to the army to get him out of the way; but he soon came back to Port-au-Prince, to be more insolent than ever. We had, however, the satisfaction of knowing that, when the revolution triumphed, this man was condemned to death for his other crimes and shot, my French colleague taking care to be present at the final ceremony, to see that the sentence was not evaded. For killing a white he would never have been executed.
It must not be supposed, because I generally refer to my own experiences, that things mended afterwards. Probably during the presidencies of Generals Nissage-Saget and Boisrond-Canal the police, though as dishonest, were less insufferable; but under Domingue and Salomon they were worse than ever, as they always are under the government of the black section of the community.
Under the present regime neither the white nor the coloured man has any rights which the black is bound to respect.