JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, July 21, 2025

21st century bellyaching Pt 3

by

20120427

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.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored