The Colour of Crime and Benign Neglect

So now that we know all the colours of the crime rainbow, let me explain why the crime jumbie was our baby who we fed, groomed and allowed to reproduce over the last two decades. We all sat in the sanctuary of our homes pointing fingers at ‘de Hills’, ‘de Beetum’ and all the other ‘bad boy areas’ because at that point, crime was largely gang related and almost entirely confined to Port-of-Spain and environs. I’ll admit it myself, even to this day, whenever I hear of another gun murder, robbery or kidnapping, I immediately assume that at least one of my Afro- Trinbagonian brothers is involved.

The reality is that in the majority of cases, we’re all spot on.

Our society saw these communities as outliers living in their own separate worlds where the rest of us remained safe as long as we didn’t look in that direction.

Let’s be honest, we attempted to ignore them into oblivion; some even argue that this was the reason for constructing the Beetham wall along the highway.

But really, is there anything that can be ignored and avoided out of existence? No, but yet that was the tactic used. The benign neglect of these communities did nothing to benefit Trinidad and Tobago.

In case you’re not sure what the term means, ‘benign neglect’ is basically an attitude or policy of non-interference or neglect of a situation. You see, it’s not complete neglect because, after all, they did receive the government’s magnanimous gesture of CEPEP employment, for whatever that’s worth. The ignorant belief was, and in many circles, still is that leaving the individuals in these communities alone would cause them to ‘kill out each other’. This egregiously morbid view was easy to sell because crime was previously considered to be native to certain areas.

But then the plan of benign neglect backfired in the early noughties when gangs dabbled in the business of kidnapping; disproportionately targeting members of the Indo-Trinbagonian community. It hit home. Only then did society wake up, especially wealthy Indo-Trinbagonians fearing for the lives of their families. Ultimately, the spate of kidnappings declined and the neglect resumed, eventually and naturally resulting in what we are experiencing in Trinidad and Tobago today.

Crime has spilled over those walls and down those hills into the rest of society and we are feeling the effects. Crime has skyrocketed all because we let it flourish by failing to deal with the situation when it first started protruding.

We were responsible for feeding the hatred that suppurated within our society’s disenfranchised communities. When these residents believe that we, the rest of society, don’t care, we become their enemies, and what do people do to their enemies? The reality is that when the colour of crime remains entirely blue by black against black, no one cares much. Additionally, there’s no regard for the dignity of these people nor their families in life or death, which is evidenced by disturbingly graphic pictures of dead black bodies on newspaper front pages like that of the Newsday on Monday 9th October, 2016.

After we neglect communities that foster black criminal elements, we choose, instead, to highlight and parade their corpses for the world to see. Have you ever seen another colour corpse on the front page of any newspaper? For the media, benign neglect only goes away when it is of entertainment or economic value; for society, benign neglect only goes away when crime arrives at a person’s doorstep; and for the government, the veil of benign neglect is only lifted during elections. We cannot ignore the cancer of crime simply because it only forms in one part of the body because when left untreated, it spreads. Then the next thing we know, our country’s social and moral fabric unravels and our international image of Caribbean superiority wanes. I concede; neglecting and refusing to deal with all the underlying issues of crime is not really important. The real solution to dealing with crime is simply to hire Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz as Minister of National Security, because God knows she’ll be better than what we have now – three clicks and crime will be gone!