GANGS?- let’s deal with reality

SO,WHAT OUR people have been long saying is being confirmed by the persons responsible for upholding law and order! Gangs are operating in our once- peaceful community with a wide scope of action which includes murder, drug running and other serious crimes.

So said the Senior Police officer responsible for the fight against crime, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Trevor Bailey as reported in last weekend’s issue of the SEARCHLIGHT. To back up his statement ACP Bailey said that there is evidence of the gang culture here including structures, names, assigned tasks to “soldiers”, including, frighteningly murders and gangs now claiming territory or turf.

Twice in the last few years Police have, perhaps naively one may say, announced gun amnesties with a view towards reducing illegal firearms on the streets, but these have clearly been ignored by the biggest perpetrators of violent crime. It is open defiance, illustrated by the recent increase in violent guns crime right after the closure of the amnesty period.

There seems to be a pattern of gun murders which do not fit any regular crime surge and seems to be targeted. In addition the daylight robberies of two credit union branches- the Teachers Credit Union, and the Government Employees Cooperative Credit Union, on opposite sides of the island, the arrest of one young woman among the alleged robbers, and, unrelated but nevertheless disconcerting, the killing of a secondary school student in “Pole Yard”, have raised further alarms in our country. ACP Bailey heightened these fears by confirming that the gangs are targeting school students.

He warned us about hiding our heads in the sand.

Sound advice. Over the years we have indulged in the media glorification of deadly crime. Countless movies took this line, starting with the US Westerns and the massacre of the indigenous people, as well as the robberies, murder and rape perpetrated by the western heroes. We wallowed in the dangerous cinema filth.