Heinous crimes under our noses

THE EDITOR: After reading the headline “Girl, 14, pregnant for father” I really have to wonder just how useful our police force is. It seems to me that the new plan for reducing crime is little more than Chin Lee taking a stroll with poor people and holding road blocks to arrest some “pipers”.

But tell me, why is it the police can come out in full force for road blocks while 14-year-old disabled girls are getting raped by their own fathers right under the noses of their knowing neighbours and community? It has always been a problem in our society and in much of the world that when the police are called to do something about a “domestic disturbance”, they shrug and turn a blind eye, saying that is not their problem, they have nothing to do with it, they don’t care. It has become the norm for the police to come up with excuses as to why they cannot “interfere” with the “disturbance”, and thus they allow the abuse, the rape, the incest and the violence to continue. From the article I gathered that neighbours, who had in fact watched him rape his own child in his bushes, were well aware of this crime and yet did nothing. It is no wonder the neighbours never called the police — we all know how useless and uninterested our police force is in handling these cases.

Maybe what Chin Lee should do is stop harassing people trying to drive home and actually do something about the heinous crimes going on right under our noses. I would like to know whether this issue — the indifference by the police to “domestic disturbances” — will be addressed by the well-advertised “Community Consultation on Developing A National Gender Policy and Action Plan”, being held by the Ministry of Community Development and Gender Affairs. This Ministry should be working in conjunction with the Ministry of National Security to address the indifference and non-involvement displayed by our police force which is supposed to serve and protect us. The police force must receive training and take an active role in community involvement and gender affairs so that one day we see fewer headlines about rapes and more headlines about arrests.

EMILY DICKSON
Maraval