Pao­lo Ker­na­han

My last col­umn drew an in­ter­est­ing re­sponse from a read­er. Sim­ply put, he sug­gest­ed that my words ac­com­plish noth­ing. The au­thor of that e-mail was, of course, right. What I write is es­sen­tial­ly opin­ion based on my ca­reer as a jour­nal­ist and my un­der­stand­ing of how the so­ci­ety func­tions, or fails at it as the case most of­ten is. The truth is my pre­sen­ta­tions are no rev­e­la­tion to the ini­ti­at­ed few and for the ma­jor­i­ty who dis­agree or couldn't care less, those are hearts and minds that can­not be won any­way.

Even more de­press­ing is the fact that my columns are forced to re­vis­it the same un­at­tend­ed is­sues that I have re­port­ed on and writ­ten about over the past 20 years. This is why to pick up the pa­per and read that Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Jack Warn­er pro­pos­es to send an emis­sary in­to Laven­tille to lis­ten to the "de­mands" of gang lead­ers near­ly made me curse out loud in de peo­ple dem gro­cery. The min­is­ter has added an im­por­tant caveat, "Once the de­mands are le­gal." That is Mr Warn­er's weak at­tempt at con­vinc­ing the coun­try that he is think­ing straight.

He should bear in mind that this new gen­er­a­tion of gang­sters will not set­tle for the mod­est fare of the Crowne Plaza. They will ex­pect no less than the re­fine­ments of the play­ground of politi­cians and their par­a­sites-the Hy­att. No right-think­ing per­son in this coun­try can dis­agree that Mr Warn­er has am­ply demon­strat­ed he is whol­ly ill-suit­ed to take on the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of bat­tling crime. At this point I am con­fi­dent that every­one, oth­er than Anand Rame­sar and his co­horts, can ap­pre­ci­ate that Jack Warn­er must be im­me­di­ate­ly re­lieved of his du­ties be­fore the sit­u­a­tion wors­ens.

Now to hear the for­mer FI­FA boss tell it, the crime sit­u­a­tion "is not all that grim." We are at the thresh­old of com­par­ing mur­der sta­tis­tics day-to-day as if to ar­gue, "Well crime isn't so bad be­cause there were four mur­ders yes­ter­day and it have none to­day and iz al­most 4 pm!"

Con­ve­nient­ly, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty de­fines crime strict­ly as mur­der, sweep­ing the in­nu­mer­able rob­beries, rapes and do­mes­tic blud­geon­ing un­der the car­pet. What we have been hand­ed is a sim­ple­ton with a sim­ple­ton's thought process­es on crime. This is why the idea of giv­ing the po­lice more ve­hi­cles must have seemed to him a ster­ling in­no­va­tion. When the first in­car­na­tion of this UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion came to pow­er the Po­lice Ser­vice re­ceived a vast in­fu­sion of ve­hi­cles. Crime was a part of my beat at the time and there was no ap­pre­cia­ble in­crease in the re­sponse of the po­lice to re­ports of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Jack Warn­er is sure­ly aware that giv­ing po­lice of­fi­cers ve­hi­cles to take to their homes os­ten­si­bly means their guns go home with them as well, oth­er­wise there would be no point to hav­ing the ve­hi­cles at home in the first place. And why would of­fi­cers loath to leave the po­lice sta­tion, get out of their beds to come to the aid of cit­i­zens?

I hope peo­ple have paid at­ten­tion to the re­marks em­a­nat­ing from John John in the wake of po­lice shoot­ings in that com­mu­ni­ty. The sis­ter of one of the vic­tims/gang­ster/good boy clear­ly opined that she would have pre­ferred that her broth­er die in a glo­ri­ous gun bat­tle with a ri­val rather than be robbed of his dig­ni­ty, felled by a stinkin' po­lice of­fi­cer.

It is tempt­ing to put such a breath­tak­ing re­mark down to the in­nate stu­pid­i­ty preva­lent in such de­pressed ar­eas. That woman how­ev­er has opened our eyes; you should all ap­pre­ci­ate that in these com­mu­ni­ties this blood thirst, this out­law way of life is a life of ho­n­our, one which all young im­pres­sion­able aban­doned boys em­u­late. For the slain man's sis­ter, be­ing shot by an of­fi­cer was an in­jus­tice be­cause he was sim­ply do­ing what they all do out there in the ghet­to-bling waste­land: shoot, kill, rob...all in a day's work re­al­ly.

Crime must be fought on sev­er­al fronts. First, the Gov­ern­ment must ab­solute­ly in­sist that all chil­dren at­tend school. No more of this win­dow squeegee by West Mall or sell­in' bod­ie on the high­way bull. It is al­so time that sex ed­u­ca­tion be in­tro­duced in schools so these young women have an ear­ly ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the dire con­se­quences of al­low­ing a youth­ful drifter to sad­dle them with a child they are ill-equipped to raise.

On the crime sup­pres­sion side I have spo­ken so much about the im­por­tance of in­creased and sus­tained polic­ing I think I am the one who is go­ing crazy. There can be no peace with these crea­tures. They must face the full, un­re­lent­ing brunt of the law. The as­sault must be sus­tained un­til the threat is suf­fi­cient­ly con­tained. But here I am talk­ing ad nau­se­um about the same dif­fi­cul­ties I al­ways have and the on­ly cer­tain­ty is that we will do al­most the op­po­site of what is nec­es­sary to al­ter of path to perdi­tion.