Parenting and the police

Trinidad and Tobago would be a far better land if citizens saw it as their duty to provide the police with vital information, instead of deliberately withholding it from them and then bashing the police for failure to solve the very crimes which the provision of the information would have ensured. In turn, the failure of successive administrations to make law the use of DNA testing has been a vexing contributory factor to the relatively low crime solving rate.

Of course there are other factors which would make our country a safer and nobler place, for example, greater emphasis on proper parenting, a conscious move by more of Trinidad and Tobago’s young people to focus on tertiary education and/or the acquiring of skills, stop making excuses for the wayward young, and families (and individuals) in communities looking out for each other in a positive manner. Additionally, there are too many areas in this country in which persons, because they receive monetary and other gifts from drug pushers and gun toting bandits, are prepared to be as unhelpful as possible to the police when their benefactors are being pursued by the law.

They will give the lawbreakers sanctuary when the police are after them for specific crimes, as well as convey to law enforcement officers, not only that they do not know where the suspects are, but in some instances insist that when the crimes were being committed the individuals were liming with them. It is a misapplied, indeed twisted sense of community and the would-be benefactors of the criminals would have done the errant youths a better service had they, initially, sought to point them in the right direction. Should the bandits be wounded or killed in a shootout with the police there are on occasion relatives and “friends” of the bandits who will claim police “brutality.”

Many crimes would be solved if there were more concerned citizens, prepared to co-operate. If a man has broken the law, and a citizen has seen the crime while it was being committed or has information which, if provided to the police, can see justice done, it is not only hypocritical but wholly immoral and dishonest to affect the posture that since the police are being paid for the jobs they perform, they should earn their living without any input from him.

A society is no better, no worse than the sum total of the parenting its young receive or not so young have received. Too many in this society and societies worldwide tend to be dismissive of proper, indeed positive parenting. I make no apology for touching once more on this theme. In all too many communities, and not necessarily those that are low income, most of the fathers appear to hold the view that the upbringing of children is the responsibility of the mothers. Yet several of the mothers, some of whom began parenthood from as young as 12 or 13, dropouts from school, need guidance themselves. The young mothers and fathers as well, who were not encouraged in their homes to aim at leading socially productive lives, should be coaxed back into the classroom, including skills centres.

There is a plus to this. Not only do they better position themselves should they take this new chance at schooling and upward mobility, but in the process they act as role models to their younger children. Mean-while, Minister of Education, Senator Hazel Manning’s emphasis on the construction and staffing of Early Care and Childhood Education Centres nationwide will in the medium and long term play a crucial role in redirecting negative energies in the society. For not only will their children be exposed to a carefully planned pre-school environment, but their children being in pre-schools will free many young mothers and allow them to search for and take up meaningful employment.

Properly organised Parent-Teacher Associations at pre-schools have critical roles to play in urging an interest on parents in their children’s progress. For example, parents at a pre-school at Beetham Gardens, the All In One Child Development Centre, where I serve on the board, are encouraged by the principal and staff to inquire as to their children’s settling in and progress, when they drop their tiny tots off on mornings come to collect them on afternoons. Some parents take turns at going in to help supervise the children at meal times, and one grandmother is there on a regular basis.

These are the things that the media may wish to pursue. It is in the pre-school that the fight to launch a new society begins. It is with the national pre-school thrust and its outreach to parents that the battle to effectively whittle down crime and wean citizens away from social negatives will be won and, hopefully, impact positively on this country’s future. Meanwhile, it will make the job of today’s hard pressed law enforcement officers that less stressful.