The re­port of the armed and ag­gra­vat­ed rob­bery at a day care cen­tre in Aranguez ex­em­pli­fies the predica­ment of this so­ci­ety, as the crim­i­nals tight­en the stran­gle­hold in which they have us.

It was bold, in broad day­light, un­con­scionable and un­car­ing for our help­less ba­bies, the so­ci­ety of the fu­ture. On the day and pe­ri­od set aside for women and fe­males at every stage of their lives, the crim­i­nals were com­plete­ly un­con­cerned about such recog­ni­tion of half the so­ci­ety.

Re­port­ed­ly, two young men, one armed with a gun, felt no com­punc­tion about ter­ror­is­ing a lone woman car­ing for ba­bies. In the process, they in­flict­ed psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma on the sev­en small chil­dren, who re­port­ed­ly clung to their care­giv­er, suf­fi­cient­ly aware that the ban­dits were not play­ing hide-and-seek with their gun and could cause harm to her and them.

These men of warped minds could not care less about the hu­man­i­ty of a woman tak­ing care of chil­dren; they went to take what was not theirs, that which they did not spend one hour labour­ing for, and that was that.

Mer­ci­ful­ly, no phys­i­cal harm came to the care­giv­er and the sev­en flow­ers of our na­tion. But that was on­ly ac­ci­den­tal. In such sit­u­a­tions, it has oc­curred that one in­no­cent wrong move by a vic­tim trig­gered these un­wor­thy mis­fits in­to fir­ing their weapons; al­ter­na­tive­ly bru­tal­is­ing an adult, even a child.

An­oth­er das­tard­ly fea­ture of this par­tic­u­lar crime was the un­seen mob boss on the phone di­rect­ing his/her hit­men.

From the re­portage of the in­ci­dent, the crim­i­nal on the phone seemed fa­mil­iar with the sur­round­ings of the day care cen­tre and some­thing about where valu­ables were kept.

If that be the case, it rais­es the is­sue of trust. Could it have been that some­one as­so­ci­at­ed in some way with the care­giv­er and the op­er­a­tions of the cen­tre was as­so­ci­at­ed in some man­ner with the crime?

If that be so, how low could that per­son have crawled?

What kind of peo­ple are be­ing bred and nur­tured in this so­ci­ety in which friend­ship now seems to mean noth­ing?

Deeply af­fect­ed too will be the par­ents of the chil­dren who, hav­ing found a place of love and care for their ba­bies, while they seek to make a liv­ing to take care of their fam­i­lies, can be rat­tled by this act of bru­tal­i­ty by two thugs and their co­hort.

The na­ture of crim­i­nals nur­tured and op­er­at­ing in this so­ci­ety tells us some­thing about our­selves as a peo­ple. Thank­ful­ly though, there are many who are still at­tempt­ing to make some­thing of this place called “home.”

We can­not lump the bur­den of to­day’s crim­i­nals and their crim­i­nal­i­ty on one per­son, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, and the polic­ing work which ad­mit­ted­ly has to be­come far more fo­cused and ef­fi­cient. We, all of us as peo­ple and in­sti­tu­tions, have to re­flect on how we have con­tributed in one way or the oth­er to the warped and soul­less minds of the young crim­i­nals; and most im­por­tant­ly, how to re­form those in­di­vid­u­als to end the pro­duc­tion-line of such “haters.”