Tinted getaway cars

FIRM action should be taken by the Police against owners of vehicles with heavily tinted glass windows. Not only are such windows against the law, but all too often they make it difficult for witnesses to kidnappings and other serious crimes, who may have been standing some distance away, to identify persons in the getaway vehicles.

The anti-crime plan announced by Minister of National Security Howard Chin Lee and acting Commissioner of Police Everard Snaggs at a Press briefing at Police Headquarters last Wednesday should take into account that heavily tinted glass would effectively shield the identities of criminals. Witnesses to a kidnapping, standing at the side of the road along which the car is driving, are prevented from seeing who the culprits are by the heavy tint. In turn, persons who may become suspicious through observing a vehicle being driven slowly along a roadway, or around an area several times, and who may wish to take a note of the occupants are prevented by the tint from later identifying the occupants to the Police in the event a crime is committed.

While persons on spot while a kidnapping is taking place by armed bandits may scamper away too scared to have a good look at the criminals, persons lower down the road, reasonably unaffected by fear of being shot at, may be able to identify the kidnappers. The law prohibiting the use of heavily tinted vehicles, or those with one-way windows, has been on the Statute books for many years, yet Police officers, whose duty it is to uphold the law, including officers in police cars or on motorcycles, all too often turn the proverbial blind eye to the offending cars etc, apparently preferring not to be bothered. Admittedly, not every owner or operator of a car with tinted glass above the legal limit is a potential criminal. But potential criminal or not, the fact is he or she is flouting the law and should be pulled aside and either warned or charged. If the motorist is warned, either the tint material should be ordered removed at once, or if this is not practicable then a time given within which the offender must bring in the vehicle to demonstrate that the order has been complied with.

A law breaker, whether his or her offence is considered major or minor, should be dealt with, even by way of a warning, and a police officer, whether on duty or not, should not take it upon himself to decide that the owner or operator of a vehicle with heavily tinted windows is merely committing a minor offence, too trivial to be bothered about. An alert officer may very well discover that the driver of the tinted vehicle is a wanted bandit. Most policemen seem reluctant to take action against persons committing minor offences, such as not wearing their seat belts or using obscene language in public, because they consider them as time-wasting nuisances, but the law is the law and this attitude only serves to encourage a more indisciplined society. A thousand police officers on the streets may turn out to be a good plan, but one which can easily be undermined by the indifferent attitude of one officer. Also, with the crime situation as it is, we should not be making the operations of offenders any easier.