Pao­lo Ker­na­han

Part 3

My columns over the past two weeks fo­cused on the in­tro­duc­tion of ini­tia­tives to ef­fect change in the way polic­ing is con­duct­ed in this coun­try. More specif­i­cal­ly, they ad­dressed the strong, and at times non­sen­si­cal, ob­jec­tion to al­most all of the mea­sures pro­posed by em­bat­tled Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs.

Trinida­di­ans are ex­perts on what must be done to rem­e­dy every prob­lem un­der the sun; when it comes to do­ing some­thing con­crete it is al­ways, "Who me? Nut me and dem nah!" For the most part, our ap­proach to crime has been to cir­cle the wag­ons. The well-heeled in our midst se­quester them­selves in fortress­es. The rest of us on the low­er rungs of the so­cio-eco­nom­ic lad­der re­ly on drapes, which ap­par­ent­ly, when closed rapid­ly at the first sign of a sus­pi­cious per­son on the street, de­vel­op Kevlar-like qual­i­ties.

Then, of course, there is ca­nine pro­tec­tion. If we are hon­est with our­selves we must con­fess to en­ter­tain­ing per­verse thoughts of: "I want to put a pit bull in my yard so mon­strous that when he fi­nal­ly hole dat zabo­ca tief in de night, all yuh go fine de nex' morn­ing is de wretch gold teeth in de dog turd."

Ban­dit-eatin' pit bulls, un­for­tu­nate­ly, does not con­sti­tute a long-term strat­e­gy to achieve true crime sup­pres­sion. We hold the fail­ure of the Po­lice Ser­vice di­rect­ly re­spon­si­ble for the un­con­trolled brush fire of vi­o­lence in so­ci­ety but there is cer­tain­ly enough blame to go around.

The Po­lice Ser­vice, to a cer­tain ex­tent, is en­vi­sioned as some­thing akin to the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty-what you do af­ter we flush is your busi­ness. We were all shocked to hear of the killing of ba­by Aaliyah, a tod­dler whose life was snuffed out like a cig­a­rette in an ash­tray.

An out­raged cit­i­zen­ry of­fers the stan­dard vi­tu­per­a­tions of hell­fire and eter­nal tor­ment of that con­demned soul in Je­sus' name. Com­ments spun in­to fod­der for the talk for­mats beg the ques­tion: do we vent over vi­o­lent crime be­cause of en­dur­ing frus­tra­tion or be­cause it is all that we are re­al­ly pre­pared to do?

At the fu­ner­al for ba­by Aaliyah, Fr Mar­tin Sir­ju lament­ed the curse of the poor. Ob­vi­ous­ly al­lud­ing to the trag­ic cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing this per­plex­ing killing, he sug­gest­ed that the poor are not in­ter­est­ed in ed­u­ca­tion and, as such, have few op­tions when claw­ing their way in­to so­ci­ety.

This dearth of op­tions, he pos­tu­lates, fires the ever-bub­bling caul­dron of frus­tra­tion among the dis­en­fran­chised; a sus­tained threat to all so­ci­ety. Of course it is easy to dis­miss Fr Sir­ju. I've of­ten heard peo­ple say "they all had ac­cess to free ed­u­ca­tion so I don't un­der­stand why I have to suf­fer for their slack­ness." It is a weak ar­gu­ment at best and al­so quite point­less.

When that ban­dit is jump­ing your fence at night with a gun in his hand and mal­ice in his mind, you will scarce­ly find the time to de­bate the his­tor­i­cal tra­jec­to­ry of your im­pend­ing mur­der. If there were no cracks peo­ple would not be falling through them and, while I am not ped­dling some "I am my broth­er's keep­er" ethos, ig­nor­ing the "at risk" among us as bor­ing clich&ea­cute;s has the alarm­ing irony of even­tu­al­ly plac­ing the rest of us at risk.

Not many of you may be aware that there is an in­ter­na­tion­al men­tor­ship pro­gramme in T&T called Big Broth­er Big Sis­ter. As the name sug­gests, it pairs adult men and women with boys and girls in need of guid­ance; chil­dren who are at the mer­cy of ei­ther dys­func­tion in the home or from sin­gle-par­ent en­vi­ron­ments where nur­tur­ing is a scarce com­mod­i­ty.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, one of the chal­lenges these men­tor­ship pro­grammes of­ten have is get­ting peo­ple to sign up. Folks are too busy with their own lives to take just one hour out of their week to spend time with a lit­tle boy or girl in need of pos­i­tive in­flu­ences. They are hap­py to give mon­ey. But more than mon­ey, these dis­card­ed chil­dren need one very sim­ple thing: they want to know that some­one cares.

Just as im­por­tant is show­ing these chil­dren that there is a huge world that ex­ists out­side of the cir­cle of pover­ty and vi­o­lence that is their dai­ly re­al­i­ty. They need to know that they don't have to be­come the next ban­dit or teen moth­er on the block; that they too can be­come a CEO, pi­lot, en­gi­neer or jour­nal­ist, just like any oth­er child.

It is not easy work; I have seen first­hand the strug­gles that the un­sung he­roes in our midst con­front try­ing to mend chil­dren shat­tered by emo­tion­al ter­ror­ism and phys­i­cal abuse. Every child saved, though, is one less mis­guid­ed youth eas­i­ly se­duced by the un­con­di­tion­al love of the street.

We can belly­ache about the fail­ure of the po­lice to deal with ban­dits un­til the cows don't come home be­cause they have been hacked up in the pas­ture by cat­tle rustlers. But un­less we take some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for a so­ci­ety that turns out more ban­dits than we can ar­rest or kill there will nev­er be an ap­pre­cia­ble de­cline in vi­o­lent crime.