Our lead story yesterday (Welcome to your arrest!) featured photographs of senior policemen greeting protestors who had turned up in order to stage a rasta roko. For those of you who didn’t pick up a copy — and shame on you — our photographers captured handshakes before the agitation began and the subsequent detention featuring the same players. A senior cop embraced the man he promptly arrested minutes later.

This came as no surprise to most of us in the newsroom. After all, we have long been witness to rasta rokos and other agitations that spring to life only seconds after members of the media show up. What it does say about our system of policing, however, is disturbing. Policemen aren’t supposed to greet elected representatives or corporators as old friends while on duty. They are supposed to keep the peace at all costs. What happened yesterday was simply a farce from beginning to end.