OVER THE YEARS I have had reason to criticise actions of the police force and/or individual officers – and if I have to in the future I will, without hesitation.
Over the years I have had reason to criticise the actions and/or comments of various attorneys general and ministers of home affairs – and if I have to in the future I will, without hesitation.
Today, however, I wish to admonish Barbadians generally about our approach to law and order, crime and violence and the men and women of the Royal Barbados Police Force. There can be no doubt that the current spate of gun crimes has a significant portion of the population on edge. Many Barbadians are scared for their own safety and that of their families and friends. Yet, despite this fear many of us rather then help the police to help us, turn on them in fits of senseless criticism, refusing to do the right thing.
This is certainly not the first time we have had a spike in this kind of criminal activity, but it does appear that on this occasion there is a level of callousness and recklessness that is uncharacteristic of the Bajan criminal. Home invasions by armed thugs for the purpose of carrying out robbery leaves every household with anything worth stealing feeling vulnerable. In fact, you don’t even have to have something worth stealing, you just have to appear that way and you can become a victim.
A fence, security alarm system, two German Shepherds in the backyard, burglar bars at every window and constant vigilance can lessen your chances of being robbed; but all of that is of little use when you venture on to the streets and come face to face with a different kind of criminal.
He does not know you and for all intents and purposes has no ill will toward you. But he will cut you down in a split second if you stand between him and his target. That’s the guy I fear most – the fellow I suspect most Barbadians worry about.
But guess what? He is your son, the fellow next door, your sister’s boy, the son of the fellow you used to talk to at school… When he walks by you, you have no idea if he is packing a rusty old .22, a shiny new 380 Glock, or the kill-a-dozen-at-a-time semi-automatic Tec-9 assault pistol.
You may detect the would-be burglar by his suspicious lurking in the neighbourhood, the strange car that drives by slowly too many days in a row, or the presence of a fellow who looks so out of place in the district. But the miscreant out to settle a score, execute a hit, pull a job with a loaded gun is not so easily detected — at least not by you.
And this is where I believe the entire society has a role to play beyond complaining that the police are not doing enough, that the Government will not bring back the hangman, that life in Dodds is too easy, that “if de fellows had work dey would not commit crime” and on and on and on.
These fellows with guns live somewhere. These gunmen have mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers. They have neighbours and friends. They are people who would like the rest of us to believe they are law-abiding, but they know the identity of these bandits before they strike and do nothing about it.
Many of us complain we can’t trust the police so we can’t tip them off, but we know how to block the number of our cellular phone to harass others and mind other people’s business anonymously. Why not block the number and call the cops?
We pretend we are afraid of retribution from the drug dealer in the district so we “don’t know nothing ’bout nothing” but at any gathering we have more to say about him and his nefarious activities than everyone else in the group combined. You mean you can’t pick up the phone and call Crime Stoppers? They answer that phone in Canada, for Pete’s sake!
Our mothers and fathers have to be prepared to tell their sons and daughters that when they get involved in such reckless criminal behaviour they will be on their own — and mean it. Maybe it is time for a mother to stand in the courtyard and shout back “I tell yuh dis did guine happen if you din keep way from bad company.” instead of “He ain’t do nuttin, de police does always pick on poor people trildren”.
My point is that we need, as a country, to stop depending on the police to prevent crime.
We need to behave like responsible citizens and tell our loved ones we do not love or condone their activities and we will inform on them.
We need to tell them we will put them out of our homes if their conduct does not change for the better.
We need to tell them we would rather go hungry for a day than buy groceries with their drug money, or the loot from their robbery.
Family members are too often refusing to utilise the strength they have over these miscreants. Many of these so-called bad boys on the streets are as timid as cats in the face of grandmothers, mothers, aunts, sisters, fathers etc; they are like wet puppies when they can’t “draw up” in some corner of gran’s old house; and will behave like infants when authority figures in their homes have reason to squeeze their ears. A terror on the street but run home like a sick dog with the slightest stomach ache or headache.
It is not the police failing to act, or the Government failing to employ a hangman that has us where we are; it is our collective failure to behave as responsible adults that is breeding a generation of trigger-happy youths.
When your “own-way” unemployed son who sits under the tamarind tree all day, pays the light bill and gives you money for groceries and to put in the collection plate at church on Sunday, pretending you don’t know where it came from doesn’t make it “clean”.
When your daughter can afford to spend more money on hair and clothing each week than you work hard for in a month, but she sleeps until 11 every morning and “don’t work no way”, pretending she is getting it legitimately doesn’t make it “clean”. There is a very good chance it has something to do with the parcels she keeps for the boyfriend who makes you so uncomfortable every time he stops outside your house.
We – adults, parents, family, friends – know too much yet do too little; we see too much and say too little; we talk about the sins of everyone else’s children but pretend we can’t see the wicked deeds of our own.
So blame the police, blame the commissioner, blame the attorney general, blame Lt Colonel Nurse at Dodds, blame Freundel, blame the news media. The problem though is that none of this blame will silence a single gun. Doing your civic duty, however, by exerting the influence you have as a parent, and sharing what you know with the police will send a message that the huge majority will not sit back and let a few determine our future.
That, my friend, will silence many a gun.
