In the long-running crime drama that is Trinidad and Tobago today, the story, so far, is that the bad guys have been able not only to pollute the good guys, but also to recruit them.
How else to explain the current sequence of episodes showing police officers trooping before the courts on criminal charges, or otherwise implicated in illegal possession of narcotics and arms? Citizens watching in astonishment and alarm could take comfort in apparent internal capacity to police and to purge the Police Service ranks. But the lesson of experience is that criminality tends to be always more extensive and deep-seated than the activity detected and exposed.
The stash of drugs and guns discovered in the ceiling of St Joseph Police Station may signal existence of a wider pattern of trafficking, in which police officers are identified as double-agent facilitators of crimes they are sworn to suppress.
This appears to confirm both the absence of resources adequate to meet the challenge of crime, and also the limits on the reliability of such resources already engaged and mobilised.
Public anxieties are hardly relieved by reports that police officers caught in, or suspected of serious illegalities, are liable, initially at least, only to be transferred.
Inside a supposedly disciplined organisation, a clear breakdown in discipline and order, entailing casual disregard of set procedure, explains some officers' evident practice of keeping court-case exhibits in their personal possession.
Arrangements for recording, safe-keeping and tracking the whereabouts of such vital inputs into criminal justice appear to have been grievously compromised.
To the extent that this applies, trust in the police is eroded ever more deeply, and at least the management credibility of the officers in command inevitably called into question.
Such is the significance of the appeal publicly made to officers by acting Commissioner James Philbert, that they should return to central control court exhibits wrongfully stored at their homes.
That he should find it necessary to make this appeal is troubling; that he should be reduced to making conscience calls upon officers under his command is indicative of a wider disruption of order and of further disrepute to "governance" within the service.
In the face of all this, higher authorities have their work cut out. On September 7, the Finance Minister's budget speech vowed (again) on behalf of the Government:
"We will strengthen our efforts to transform the organisational culture, operations, management systems and human resources of our protective services to enable the T&T Police Service to increase efficiency and effectiveness."
Ms Tesheira avoided reference to much-advertised efforts over some four years, and involving US academic experts, to "transform" the Police Service.
Waging an epic, and so far losing, struggle against crime, her government continues to place reliance on plan, after plan, after plan.
In its latest turn to foreign-expert solutions, the government has embraced "in excess of 300 recommendations" by retired Canadian Major General Cameron H Ross.
Once again, a Ross Plan raises expectations for "transformation" of the police. And once again, government rhetoric cranks up to offer boundless faith, hope and prayer for happier outcomes than before.
"The message to the criminal is simple: you will be found and brought to justice, and you will feel the full brunt of the law," said Ms Tesheira, rising to full height.
Now, T&T has to hope that this message is being effectively received, in the first instance, by those sworn to uphold and enforce the law.?