It has to be a case of an­nu­al po­lice goat mouth. Over the last sev­er­al years, as soon as the po­lice fin­ish their vac­cu­ous and inane boast­ing about how safe the Car­ni­val was, a spate of crime fol­lows.

I re­mem­ber how Ray­mond Craig was boast­ing of how the po­lice want the Car­ni­val to be safe by ban­ning glass bot­tles and how Mervyn Richard­son was bleat­ing, al­beit good na­tured­ly, about how they will lock down the streets, the en­try and ex­it routes, the max­is and the whole thing.

It worked well for a cou­ple days and then the de­mon re­turned and this time, the first place it hit was the heart of the po­lice. Sure­ly they must re­gret their self-as­sured, mis­placed sense of cock­i­ness.

While they are out in droves on In­de­pen­dence Square, wreck­ing and tick­et­ing toute bagai, a pen­sion­er is slain, a man is de­cap­i­tat­ed, a po­lice­man and an­oth­er's broth­er were mur­dered. It has to be that some­one put goat mouth on crime.

On­ly a few months ago they were brag­ging that crime, oth­er than mur­ders, was down and they stopped short of say­ing that it was be­cause of good po­lice work be­cause they knew the de­tec­tion rate was even low­er than last year's hav­ing re­gard to the long list of bod­ies queued up in the morgue.

Now, can they say any­thing dif­fer­ent? Can they still sing and dance and tell the peo­ple that mur­ders and all oth­er crimes are down?

William Ra­jku­mar,

Ch­agua­nas.