Robbed outside the police compound; almost robbed again

Dec 13, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

“Wuh don’t happen in a million years is happen in a minute.” I grew up hearing my mom repeat that saying endless times. It is a favourite chant of the older folks. But it is true. I will boldly take the chauvinistic leap and say there is no one in this country who knows the Georgetown seawall as I do. I grew up in that place.
My dad was the groundsman at Saint Stanislaus cricket ground next to the seawall. Countless times I skipped school and appeared on the ground. While my dad worked, I roamed the seawall from Kingston to Kitty. My mom was terribly upset but I was more interested in the ocean than school. In many ways, I think that choice shaped my philosophical conceptions.

As a ten-year-old boy, I saw many things in the forested areas of Thomas Lands where Saint Stanislaus ground is. One must remember that at that time there wasn’t the National Park, Carifesta Avenue, GT&T earth station, Marian Academy, Camp Ayanganna The entire area where these structures are now located was bush.
My dad traversed a narrow bushy track to get to Saint’s. Many times, I heard cries of “help,” “murder.” I saw many victims of attacks in that area. The one that stuck in my memory was the body of Dolly Baksh. I saw people running to this particular spot, so I followed. And there lay the body of this beautiful young lady.
For those who don’t know who Dolly Baksh was, she was a professional Guyanese dancer of the Lebanese genre. She made her name gyrating to a popular tune the local bands played – a cover of Santana’s famous song, “Samba Pati.” Someone strangled her not far from Saint’s.
When I courted my wife in 1978, I took her to the seawall everyday to eat the food my mom sent for her. For years now, my wife and I have been jogging on the wall almost everyday. For all those decades perambulating the Georgetown seawall, nothing violent ever happened to me. In fact, nothing ever happened to me and I spent lots of years in some of the most desolate spots of that area, even in the evenings.
Last Tuesday, my mom’s saying came vividly to me. I figured that the best place to park at the seawall was outside the building that housed the Tactical Services Unit (TSU) of the police force. The windows are always open. There are always policemen at the windows. There are always policemen in the yard. This is right outside the bandstand, on the southern part of the road.

In fact, many times, after parking, policemen would yell out, “Fredday, Fredday!”
On Tuesday evening, my wife and I returned to my car after jogging to find that the quarter glass, which is an immobilized window next to the back door window, was shattered and all our stuff stolen, including money we had put aside to purchase an exercise machine the next day.
Irritatingly, my wife’s handbag was stolen and important personal items gone. The underlying meaning of this story is that thieves and robbers do not care about police presence. I thought that thieves would be deterred from breaking into vehicles if they are parked outside of the police compound by the Camp Street seawall. After so many decades, the Tuesday evening incident proved me wrong.
We replaced lost cards and changed our locks to the house since they took all our keys. The problem was getting the quarter glass. My cousin, William Cox, and I went hunting. Beharry’s told me that my Toyota Rav 4 is the older model so they don’t have it but I could order it. It will cost $10,000. They did say that they have the quarter glass for the new models at $14,000. William and I went to the second-hand stores that specialize in spares. Three places had a second-hand quarter glass for $30,000. One store had it for $50,000. I wasn’t horrified.

I know this is Guyana. I didn’t have that kind of money and even if I did, I wasn’t paying $30,000 for a used item the original of which goes at $10, 000. William and I went to Autopit at Sixth Street, Cummings Lodge. They replaced the glass with Perspex and everything cost $4000.
I hope Khurshid Sattaur, the Commissioner-General of the GRA, is reading this. Not only is my SUV an old model but it carries a sheet of Perspex. Now I suppose he sent me eight property tax forms to fill in because he assumed that I am making money.
Well if I was, surely I would have liked to replace my broken quarter glass with the original Toyota make. What is $30,000 for someone like me that makes so much money that the GRA boss wanted me to declare property tax for the past eight years? Is Sattaur targeting the right people?