Every unpunished murder takes away something from the security of every man’s life. – Daniel Webster, American statesman, senator and orator (1782-1852)
IN?THE?EARLY?NIGHT OF TUESDAY LAST, Arthur Chaderton, in his golden years, and comfortably reposed at home with his visiting son-in-law Gerhart Metamara Stock, would suddenly be confronted by death.
And he would fail to stare it down.
Death, clothed in a mask and other vestment suited to hiding true identity, would take him by the bullet. Arthur Chaderton’s twilight years would come to a brutal end; his 42-year-old son-in-law’s demise, though a little later that night, no less brutish.
And outside the reactionary gasps hardly a voice of protest from ordinary Barbadians. The slayings are merely news; the victims, newsmakers. To his credit, from among the powers that be, the Attorney General has expressed concern about the “periodic brutal acts” of violence.
And Mr Adriel Brathwaite, quite reasonably, has called upon the public to help the police in their investigation of the Salters double murder. We urge all with any information whatsoever to present it to the law officers. It is the least that could be done for the Chaderton family.
Commissioner of Police Darwin Dottin not very long ago pointed to falling figures of crime. His report offered hope; some confidence in national security; and an understanding the police were on top of things.
The more recent spate of shootings, armed robberies and burglaries are undermining the consolation offered by the police, and the signs are that the populace is becoming resigned to its apparent fate: new and unrelenting and unstoppable crime.
Is this what we will now endure? Shall we realistically expect to be upgraded to the crime state of Trinidad, Guyana and Jamaica?
It has been said that in gunplay Barbados is now where Trinidad was 30 years ago, and it is only a matter of time before we are a place of regular mayhem.
We dare to differ. We Barbadians are not a violent people. As American couple Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider once swore, we shall concentrate on what’s important in life. We’re going to strive every day to be kind and generous and loving persons.
We are going to keep death right here, so that any time we even think about getting angry at . . . anybody else, we’ll see death and we’ll remember.
But we may expect no such mantra of the growing number of armed robbers among us, or anticipate comfort in the incidence of murder in our midst.
Surely, our police are on the case of the double murder in St George – working around the clock; and we are grateful.
But we would rather that they were not. We would have preferred that the lives of Arthur Chaderton and Gerhart Stock had not been snuffed out – and so ignobly.
