Commentary
Debbie Jacob
DEBBIE JACOB
NOTHING CAN match those days I spent in the TTPS Caroni canine annex, sifting through dusty files to write Police Dogs of Trinidad and Tobago: A 70-Year History. A gold mine couldn’t have matched the treasure trove of documents I discovered.
September 25 marks the 73rd anniversary of the canine section’s inception and its work that has spanned pre-independence, independence, the steelband clashes, the rise of the illegal drug trade, the Black Power Movement, kidnapping and international terrorism.
I’m tempted to write about the struggles and excitement of creating and then sustaining this important police section. Instead, I present the story of how one important picture made it into the dogs’ history. It proves how non-fiction writers become dogged detectives tracking down resources.
About 20 years ago, I wandered into the Police Museum on the corner of Edward and Sackville Streets, Port of Spain, and discovered a picture of the first four canine officers and their dogs as they arrived in this country on September 25, 1952. They stand on the boat’s deck. Bruno looks fondly up at his handler, Cpl Theoophilus Thomas. Next to him, Cpl Carlyle Piggott holds Winston’s leash. Sgt George Alexis poses with Carlos and PC Hamilton Bridgeman stands alongside Shah. Three of the officers don the fedoras of the day. They are all wearing suits.
Excited to find such a picture existed, I returned to my research in Caroni the following weekend, confident the picture was safe. I learned the hard way pictures disappear, and you can spend years tracking one down.
When I returned for the picture a couple of years later, the museum had closed, and the police didn’t know what had happened to the picture. I kept researching, writing, and searching for the photo.
One day, I was searching online for information about Piggott, the only canine officer ever to be killed in the line of duty, and up popped a notification labelled “Carlysle Piggott,” mentioning him in a picture of the first four canine officers. Former police commissioner Eustace Bernard had the picture in his personal papers, which he donated to the Alma Jordan Library at the University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine.
No information accompanied the well-preserved picture. I paid for the use of the photograph; then faced another daunting task: determining who owned the copyright. Who took the picture? Joanne Archie, head of TTPS communications, assigned PC Darrius Allen to help me search.
Without copyright information, my US publisher, McFarland & Company Inc, wouldn’t allow the photo in the book. The TT Police Service (TTPS) determined it didn’t own the copyright. UWI didn’t know who owned the picture.
Then, Allen found a laminated copy of another version of the picture in the Port of Spain Gazette newspaper dated September 26, 1952, with no photographic credit given.
Only one solution remained: to establish an argument for the picture as an orphan piece of work. My argument for the publisher was that it is reasonable to assume that the picture was taken by the Gazette because the police had not taken the picture, and most individuals would not have had a darkroom and the equipment to produce a photo overnight for the newspaper.
Several searches to determine who held the copyright to the defunct Gazette newspaper files when it closed in 1959 proved futile. I said the TT police and I believe this picture should be considered an orphan picture with credit given to the Port of Spain Gazette newspaper. The published book references the Eustace Bernard collection, SC 30 Box 1 Folder 61, and the Alma Jordan Library, where the picture was found.
The years it took to track down the picture and establish it as an orphan photo proved its worth. Readers got to see the first four canine officers who established the canine section. They got their rightfully deserved place in history.
No one ever knows all the work that goes on behind the scenes in that non-fiction book that readers hold in their hands. Only non-fiction writers know the joys of working like a detective to solve issues that arise in research.
As I celebrate 73 years of the canine section’s history this Thursday, it is my honour to also pay tribute to the growing number of Caribbean writers devoted to non-fiction, particularly journalism, history and memoirs.
I hope to encourage others to contribute to this growing canon of Caribbean literature, which documents our personal and collective history. The work is challenging and often progresses at a snail’s pace, but it is important and rewarding. There’s no feeling like writing non-fiction.
