My sis­ter was walk­ing along the Siparia Main Road on Oc­to­ber 29 when she was ac­cost­ed by a men­tal­ly un­sta­ble va­grant. He ver­bal­ly abused and threat­ened her. She tried calm­ly walk­ing away but he kept fol­low­ing her at close range, un­til she be­came fear­ful enough to flee in­to a phar­ma­cy. The va­grant now sta­tioned him­self at the phar­ma­cy door while threat­en­ing loud­ly to do my sis­ter harm and hurl­ing all sorts of abuse at her. She raised an alarm and it was sug­gest­ed that she call the po­lice, who are sta­tioned mere foot­steps away from the phar­ma­cy. On telling the va­grant that she in­tend­ed to call the po­lice, he dared her to come out­side, threat­en­ing to harm her when she even­tu­al­ly did. He re­peat­ed­ly said she had to "come out some time." She then called the po­lice, ex­plain­ing the sit­u­a­tion to a fe­male of­fi­cer and ask­ing for as­sis­tance.

She was told by the of­fi­cer that they know the man, that he "does trip some­times, ac­cord­ing to the moon." The of­fi­cer then said they had no ve­hi­cles avail­able to reach the phar­ma­cy, mere foot­steps away, and there­fore they could not pro­vide any as­sis­tance. Now in a quandary, my sis­ter re­quest­ed help from some­one in­side the phar­ma­cy and a young man of­fered brave­ly to es­cort to the taxi stand and en­sure that she got a taxi with­out be­ing harmed. All the while the va­grant was abu­sive and threat­en­ing. Now I do not un­der­stand how we can claim to be crack­ing down on crime, to be in a grand state of emer­gency, to have a ze­ro tol­er­ance men­tal­i­ty to­wards crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, yet a woman in dan­ger from a men­tal­ly un­sta­ble per­son can­not get as­sis­tance from the po­lice a few feet away.

So what would have war­rant­ed ac­tion by them? Would blood­shed have been enough to get them on their feet, or would it have re­quired an ac­tu­al death? In this so-called state of emer­gency, how can a po­ten­tial­ly vi­o­lent va­grant be com­plete­ly ig­nored by the po­lice? I am dis­sat­is­fied with the lack of re­sponse by the po­lice and I think it is the kind of be­hav­iour that in­spires a lack of con­fi­dence and re­spect for the po­lice. I will be tak­ing this com­plaint fur­ther, even though, sur­prise, sur­prise, the link to the po­lice com­plaints Web site ap­pears to be non-func­tion­al. Nev­er mind, I am quite able to do the nec­es­sary walk­ing to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to make the com­plaint and get the job done. Af­ter all, I am not a po­lice of­fi­cer.

Di­anne Stew­art

Fyz­abad