Failure at Laventille

AROUND 8.45 pm on Monday, a 13-year-old girl steps out of her home on Mentor Alley, Laventille, to get a "breath of fresh air" and meets her death instead in a fusillade of bullets. The killing of Joanna "Sookie" Walker, a student of Mucurapo Junior Secondary School, now tells us that the campaign to curb gang violence in this eastern suburb of the capital city is now definitely over; the gunmen have won and the stepped-up Police/Army patrols, incapable of protecting the residents there, should now move out as an admission of its failure. We must admit when a cause is lost. The great peace-keeping operation that is supposed to be focused on "the killing fields" of Laventille, the round-the-clock surveillance of the area by joint Police/Army patrols, have clearly been a waste of time. On Monday evening, Mentor Alley became another Laventille battle zone with bullets flying along the street. Joanna's father, Ancil Skinner, told Newsday that he heard about 30 gunshots outside his home after Joanna had stepped out for a breather. According to the police, Joanna and two of her friends, who were also injured in the hail of gunfire, just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, since the police received information that the armed men were hunting for a Muslim man, another episode in the gang warfare that bedevils Laventille. But where were the mobile patrols that are supposed to be keeping a watch over this troubled district?

We must say that we find the account of this tragic incident quite strange. The fact that a gang of armed men, whether on foot or in a vehicle, could be roaming about Laventille at that hour looking for a "Muslim man" and yet remain undetected by the patrols which were supposed to be combing the area is, to begin with, somewhat puzzling. The story becomes even more curious when we are told that these gunmen just opened fire on Mentor Alley, riddling the place with some 30 bullets with apparently no "Muslim man" around. Instead, their apparent “Wild West” escapade resulted in the death of an innocent teenager and injury to two of her friends. What are we to conclude about such a story? That the roving gang members did not care two hoots about the Police/Army patrols and just went on a shooting spree? What utter contempt for the concentration of law-enforcers who were assigned to keep Laventille free of this kind of violence! And even if the patrols could not get to the scene on time to catch the shooters, did none of them hear the rapid explosion of gunfire? We are told that an army van which took Joanna and her two injured companions to the hospital was in the area. Could they not have blocked off Mentor Alley and so prevent the gunmen from escaping? Or were there in fact no patrols at all? Or, since this story breeds speculation, were there really no roving gang members at all? We are far from satisfied with the account given of this fatal shooting and we expect it would be the subject of some investigation. In any case, that such an incident could take place in spite of the heavy operation that has been mounted, following the great concern over gang warfare in Laventille, makes a mockery of the whole effort. The failure of all anti-crime measures taken so far, Anaconda, Baghdad and now this, can only further erode the confidence of citizens in the ability of the authorities to deal with this frightful scourge. TT is being threatened by the action of bandits, kidnappers and murdering gang members who now seem to be operating at will. If the authorities cannot keep the peace in Laventille, what can they do about the rest of the country?