An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The cold and cal­cu­lat­ed mur­der of Shayana Ruiz, al­leged­ly stem­ming from a con­fronta­tion over mon­ey owed to her, is not sim­ply an­oth­er act of vi­o­lence, ac­cord­ing to re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Dr Garvin Heer­ah.

Heer­ah said the killing re­flects “a far deep­er and more dis­turb­ing trend that has in­fil­trat­ed seg­ments of our so­ci­ety”.

Fol­low­ing care­ful analy­sis, he said, “What we are wit­ness­ing is the nor­mal­iza­tion of ag­gres­sion as a means of re­solv­ing con­flict.”

Ruiz, 25, of Quar­ry Road, Diego Mar­tin, was al­leged­ly lured to her ex-boyfriend’s house at Ed­in­burgh South, Ch­agua­nas, on Ju­ly 29 un­der the pre­text that an out­stand­ing loan of $4,500 would be re­paid.

Dur­ing a re­port­ed con­fronta­tion, Ruiz was al­leged­ly stabbed mul­ti­ple times in the back, head, face, chest and hand by the man’s cur­rent com­pan­ion. She lat­er died at hos­pi­tal.

Her au­top­sy is sched­uled to take place to­day.

Com­ment­ing on what he de­scribed as a grow­ing cul­ture of vi­o­lence in so­ci­ety, Heer­ah said it was ev­i­dent in road rage in­ci­dents, in­creas­ing lev­els of vi­o­lence in schools, and “the lan­guage of ha­tred, di­vi­sion and vengeance that is too of­ten echoed with­in our pub­lic dis­course and even through our cor­ri­dors of pow­er”.

He al­so high­light­ed what he de­scribed as un­der­ly­ing racial ten­sions that con­tin­ue to emerge be­neath the sur­face of so­cial har­mo­ny.

“We can­not ig­nore the un­der­ly­ing cur­rents of racial ten­sion that con­tin­ue to sur­face be­neath the ve­neer of so­cial har­mo­ny,” he said.

The for­mer head of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre said one of the most con­cern­ing de­vel­op­ments from a se­cu­ri­ty per­spec­tive was the in­creas­ing lev­el of psy­chopathol­o­gy as­so­ci­at­ed with vi­o­lent crime.

“We are see­ing of­fend­ers dis­play­ing ex­treme bru­tal­i­ty, a lack of em­pa­thy, and a will­ing­ness to kill over dis­putes that should nev­er es­ca­late be­yond a con­ver­sa­tion,” he said.

He added that vi­o­lence at many crime scenes was be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly ex­ces­sive and per­son­al, sig­nalling a dan­ger­ous shift in be­hav­iour.

“This is no longer sole­ly a polic­ing is­sue,” Heer­ah said.

In­stead, he said, it had be­come “a na­tion­al so­cial re­silience is­sue” re­quir­ing a whole-of-so­ci­ety re­sponse in­volv­ing fam­i­lies, schools, com­mu­ni­ties, faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tions, men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als and the jus­tice sys­tem.

Heer­ah warned that fail­ure to ad­dress the cul­tur­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal fac­tors dri­ving vi­o­lence could have se­ri­ous con­se­quences.

“If we fail to ad­dress the cul­tur­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal dri­vers of vi­o­lence, we risk rais­ing an­oth­er gen­er­a­tion that views vi­o­lence as an ac­cept­able so­lu­tion to con­flict,” he said.

He con­clud­ed: “The great­est threat to any na­tion is not on­ly the crim­i­nal with the weapon, but a so­ci­ety that slow­ly be­comes de­sen­si­tised to vi­o­lence.”

He cau­tioned that this was a trend that must be re­versed be­fore it be­comes per­ma­nent­ly em­bed­ded in the na­tion­al char­ac­ter.