A CHEAPENING OF LIFE

With 71 murders committed for the year, in almost as many days, there is mounting public concern that the country’s embattled protective services are either not doing enough to halt the madness, may be unable to cope or may be concentrating on the wrong point of investigations. Persons have been murdered in their homes, on the streets and in public places, and Government with a seeming inability to devise and implement successful strategies to contain the record number of murders, instead has been making platitudinous statements in an effort to calm public unease. Acting Prime Minister, Dr Lenny Saith, spoke at Thursday’s post-Cabinet media conference, of Government’s concern at the crime situation, while National Security Minister Martin Joseph sought to assure the public it could expect to see positive results from action by law enforcement agencies.

But neither the voicing of Government’s concern, nor the promise of imminent results are new and have been stuck record reactions since shortly after the present administration came into power. The truth is that the public is fed up with talk, however well meaning, and wants to see action which will calm their understandable fears. In many cases the police, in an immediate reaction to murders, have been inclined to say that either they were drug related or gang related, in the process conveying the impression that there was evidence linking the killings to specific individuals or at least which shortlisted possible suspects. In addition, when some of the murders were committed the police have advised not only that they were revenge killings, but that the persons killed had been suspects with respect to murders which had taken place earlier.

Does the constant repetition suggest that there were a few police officers, who not only had reason to believe that the murders had been committed by persons whose identities had been made known to them, but had been deliberately tardy in acting? If this is so, then why had they acted in a manner not in accordance with the motto of the Police Service: “To protect and serve?” Or did they hold that the interests of the country would have been better served this way? Yet any refusal to act promptly or at all on information, a posture likely to lead to additional killings, should be viewed as almost as bad as the initial murders themselves.

But even as we point this out, we wish to reaffirm our belief in the principle of law that an individual must be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Nonetheless, how the individual should be treated is a matter which should be left for our Courts to decide. Meanwhile, in the majority of capital offences, alleged and otherwise, it has not only been the act of killing, but the seeming disregard for other persons right to live and the unfortunate inference that life is cheap that is disturbing. Have some of the persons murdered, and whose killers have not yet been brought to justice, murdered to protect drug turfs, as is commonly believed?

But if the questionable “right” to sell, say, cocaine, marijuana and heroin is said to be behind the so-called turf wars and several of the killings then why have the protective services, in addition to their clamping down on the retailers of drugs, not targetted the importers and/or major distributors as well? Everyone appears to know who they are, save for the police. In turn, why has the Inland Revenue Department not investigated and taken action against the drug importers and distributors, whose incredibly affluent lifestyles are not in keeping with their declared incomes? Perhaps, if the relevant authorities acted with dispatch and impartiality against the drug majors it may lead to dramatic and positive results in the battle against the upsurge in serious crimes bedevilling the country today and end, inter alia, this seemingly endless cheapening of life.