Research Institute for the Study of Man
The Earth Most Strangest Man: The Rastafarian by Mortimo Planno
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The Police

The police and the Ras Tafaris are in the state of exasperation with each other, which can lead to no good. The police have had to cope with a violent section of the Movement, and have had to conduct security operations designed to discover the limits of violent intention. Such operations are seldom gentle. Add to this the complications of ganja hunting, plus the fact that policeman share the public's prejudice against men who wear their hair long, and it is not surprising that there have been many cases of arbitrary action by policemen against innocent people. This had had the unfortunate result of wasting a valuable opportunity of enlisting Ras Tafari support against violence. Many Ras Tafari brethren were shocked by stories of stocks of arms, of foreign mercenaries, and of murder of Ras Tafaris, and so the moderates, who are the great majority, might have been enlisted in stamping out violence. Instead, by treating all Ras Tafari brethren alike as outcasts, the public and police have stimulated their sense of common grievance, and may have strengthened rather than weakened the ideological respect for violence.

The police have to keep in touch with potentically violent sections of the Movement. Apart from this, they should leave innocent Ras Tafari brethren alone, stop cutting off their hair, stop moving them on, stop arresting them on minor pretexts, and stop beating them up. Violence breeds violence.

As for ganja, all experience shows that this trade cannot be stopped by trying to catch the individual smoker. Police efforts should concentrade on finding out who are the big traders who are making money out of ganga cultivation from a helicopter.

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