GATED COMMUNITIES, access to transportation that does not countenance minibuses and ZR vans, six-figure salaries and all the factors that lead to one being designated as falling into a higher socio-economic bracket cannot offer insulation from gun crime.
Casual observation would suggest that there are many people living in this country who, while admitting they have some fear of crime, give the impression that because they are not resident in one of our notorious, poorer, stigmatised communities they don’t have to be part of the solution to the growing challenge of crime and violence.
Last Saturday morning’s shooting of nine-year-old Xavier Bertrand ought to have caused anyone who thought this way to seek a new perspective. Xavier was exiting a store on Swan Street with his mother, father and older brother when a bullet apparently grazed the top of his skull and lodged in his head. Luckily, he has lived to talk about it.
There has been nothing said so far by the police or the family to suggest that any member of the family was the target – or that anyone else was shot at specifically, for that matter. The bullet that felled Xavier could have struck anyone else in the area, and given the youngster’s height, had it missed him it might have struck a taller person in the chest or abdomen with deadly consequences.
This might have been random. It might have been accidental. But it is a deadly serious matter. Many of us seem unaware of the extent of the problem of illegal guns in this country and the fact that when considered against the backdrop of our apparent growing disregard for the lives and safety of our neighbours, we are brewing a dangerous social cocktail.
Xavier’s mother Asha Payne said she was very upset with the growing number of gun crimes in the country and called for the “foolishness” to stop. That should be the cry of every law- abiding Barbadian — but it cannot end with a cry. We have to offer total tangible support to the men and women of the Royal Barbados Police Force. We have a duty to spill the beans on those who would wish to turn our communities into a “Tombstone” from the days of the Wild West.
These weapons are not falling from the sky during heavy rains; they are being imported with illegal drugs, in barrels, via fishing boats, concealed among cargo in shipping containers, and those making the connections are hardly likely to be the “boys on the block”. Common sense would suggest individuals with substantially more financial resources are involved.
If we really want to stop the “foolishness”, we have first to stop pretending that it is someone else’s problem and that if we look the other way it will not touch us. Xavier was as innocent as they come and he almost lost his life. The shooting statistics from the police over the last five years should have made us all aware that the only reason our murder rate is not substantially higher is because our criminals are apparently not very good shots.
We need to deny them the opportunity to practise on us, and to do this successfully we must commit to cooperating with law enforcement. Like it or not, there is no other way because these thugs are not amenable to gentle persuasion.