THE perception is that the crime rate (serious crime) has reached alarming proportions. Serious crime may be loosely defined as the use of force in the process of criminal activity that results in the maiming or killing of people. Berbice seems the epicenter of this horror. Reportedly, there have been some 100 murders in the past few months, with two-thirds of the victims being women. Serious crimes justifiably take the headlines. The reportage, as is our custom, is woeful. Truth be told, we cannot write, and analysis is alien to us. Investigative reporting is simply a litany of irrelevant facts and useless incoherent information.
We read of contradictory thoughts from the Commissioner of Police as against our concerned politicians. This matters not to the victims, nor their survivors, nor to the victims of tomorrow’s murders and rapes and pillages. At this point we seem to be paralyzed as to how to arrest this incline in crime. The Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan was spot on. Crime is the most pressing and depressing aspect of this nation. We know for a fact too that the Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan is gravely concerned.
It would be unfair to blame the young law enforcement officers for this. But the leaders of our new government are trying what they know and what they may have seen elsewhere. We have the 2 a.m. closing time for bars and rum shops. Good start. It is a North American thing and could be useful–last call for drinks is 1 a.m. in Canada and the USA (except Quebec). But here in Guyana, we can start our drinking sprees at 8:30 a.m. while in most places in North America, one cannot have a drink in public places before 12 noon. And in North America, if you start drinking at noon, there are police cruisers monitoring you, and the bars can stop selling you “beverages” if you appear “tipsy”. No such thing here! In brief, we have taken one thing and are lost as to how one thing is connected to many other things.
The second move, excellent, was to have part of the SWAT deployed to Berbice. They did a fabulous job hunting down the perpetrators in Corentyne, Berbice. But the SWAT cannot address the root causes of crime. By definition and training, they react after the fact. While they are doing remarkable work, some members have the “regular” police reclining on motor bikes in shady places doing goodness knows what. Indeed, the good cops we know are quite distressed since they are painted nastily by the unscrupulous fellows who “lay back”.
There is something called the Citizens’ Security Programme, and it was supposed to be part of this. In fact, it is a great initiative; but the initiative is useless if there is no competence. Nothing has happened so far, unfortunately. There is another excellent initiative: the Crime Research Unit. Solving crime takes serious research and firm and immediate action. We would suggest the creation of what we could call a Jeopardy Spread. In brief, it would answer these questions: why is there crime? What are the types and categories of crime being committed? Who are the perpetrators and in what concentrations or clusters? How can we predict the spread given the analysis? How do we solve it all?
The sensational crimes are horrible, but there are perpetual crimes that never see the light of day. The child abuse horror- destroying lives forever; fathers and uncles raping children; silence; children being bought and sold under the guise of religion. Girls being torn out of schools physically and sold to persons. Victims treated like damaged goods and “married off”. The rape continues, and women are reduced to cooking, cleaning, sexual slaves, and children-bearers. Decades of misery, until the victims begin to think that evil is good and good is evil. There is no escape, and all the while all is hidden beneath this diseased cloak of silence.