Until such time as you come face to face with criminality,
chances are that everyone else who does will just be a statistic
to you.
That is not to say that the kinds of criminal acts that are
taking place today will not leave you scared out of your wits.
No one can feel safe, except of course, those who have the
luxury of having armed guards and 24-hour security following
them from the moment they awake in the morning, until such
time as they doze off in the night. How they sleep in this
current crime ridden season is testimony to their indifference.
Invasion of privacy
I suspect though, that having access to that kind of security
can sometimes be disadvantageous to some of them who hold
high offices in this country. But that’s another story!
Having walked into my apartment in Woodbrook a few years ago
and found the entire place turned upside down, I really don’t
think that anyone outside of my family could really understand
how we felt.
It was really very painful. Not that we lost anything that
was physically significant. The money and other valuables
you could easily obtain again but things that matter, the
invasion of your privacy, your feelings of security, your
self-worth and so much of yourself seem to go out of the window.
I have to admit that despite the fact that the robbery took
place between 9 am and 5 pm, none of us at home could sleep
for several nights.
If a dog barked at night, we jumped. Sometimes, even the twigs
and leaves that fell from the breadfruit tree which hung loosely
over the house, raised anxieties. A car door, opening or closing,
aroused suspicions. It was that bad.
It was only when we vacated the place and made our way to
another home some distance away that the family was able to
“heal” from that experience.
Not that we have completely got over the fear of something
like that happening again, such are the scars that linger
on, some 20 years later.
The police came, of course. They searched for fingerprints,
got some, and promised to return when they had “something”
for us. We never heard from them, although one of the younger
officers found time to turn up on a number of occasions to
“visit” my 19-year-old niece until she told him
that she was not interested in his advances.
He wasn’t pleased but he grudgingly moved on.
It is a far cry now from what it was then. Crime has certainly
come a long way.
I don’t think that we could have anticipated how crime
would have evolved. I mean, even then, we really did not expect
the police to find those criminals, but I’d have to say
that we felt safe enough to walk from Roberts Street to the
Mas Camp Pub or from Harvard Sports Club, which was about
five minutes away, to our home any hour of the night or early
morning.
You think I could do that now?
And yet, I have a sense that those who have not been affected
by the lawlessness, who have not been confronted by banditry
and criminal activity, seem to think that they are exempted
from it. There is this feeling that since their homes are
secured with the best systems in the world, they are safe.
Well I have news for them. They are dead wrong!
Chances are, should things continue the way they are going,
it would not be long before every law-abiding citizen is faced
with a criminal situation. Not that I am hoping for it, but
that’s the reality. You may very well be next.
Crime entrenched
Crime is not going away with the wave of a magical wand or,
for that matter, on the whims and fancies of some government
blueprint. It is far too entrenched.
It will take a collective effort from all of us to realign
and reconstruct this society and return us to standards of
acceptibility.
Of course, it would help if we get the people who manage the
country to come up with a sensible and credible plan to take
us forward—one that would demand we leave the divide
and rule mentality behind. The criminals are already doing
a fine job in that respect.
Perhaps, it has to start small—a week of being courteous
to one another on the roads, where anyone caught violating
the law would not only be made to pay a hefty fine, but must
feel the scorn of the citizenry, either by constant horn-blowing
or some other mechanism that would allow that person to know
that we are not prepared to accept any deviant behaviour.
Whatever it is, it must be a confident stride, embraced by
everyone from the ordinary citizen, backed up by corporate
T&T, the volunteer organisations, churches, youth groups,
sporting associations and clubs and the political parties,
all of them.
Crime is destroying our country. We must dig deep inside to
change that. We are losing far too many of our young people,
some of whom could easily be another Crawford, Yorke, Lara
or Boldon.
Or, is it that we don’t really care?
