Thieving is becoming a way of life

Mar 11, 2012 Features / Columnists, My Column

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This past week the police reported a whopping thirty-four per cent increase in armed robberies.  In its statement the police reported, “Robbery under arms has increased by 34% unto February 2012, with 171 reports compared to 128 during January and February 2011.
“The statistics indicate an increase of 25% in the number of armed robberies involving the use of firearms, and a 50% increase in armed robberies where instruments other than firearms were used by the perpetrators.”
Something must be horribly wrong. Many of the people who committed these robberies were caught but there still continues to be this increase. It could be that until one group is caught it perpetrated a series of armed robberies.
In the first two months this year there have been 171. Simple Mathematics would show that there were almost three armed robberies every day. This tells a story. It suggests that increasingly young people are going to great lengths to acquire money and jewellery (which translates into money) from people who probably slaved all their lives to get what they now have.
Some time back I noted that the face of crime is getting younger and indeed this seems to be proven correct, because the people arrested are for the greater part, teenagers. These would be the people who have come out of school ill-equipped to undertake some of the jobs in mainstream national life. Few of them are prepared to accept a job as labourer.
I have repeatedly heard some young people say that they cannot work for the money being paid. There was a time when young people were proud to earn their own money. They relished the fact that they could buy the basic things. Some were proud to put money into the hands of their mothers.
I know people who gave their mothers money and were stunned a few years later when she gave them a bank book that contained every cent they gave her. They now had a foundation. People were proud to get up in the morning knowing that they were going to work.
This seems to have changed drastically. There are young people who are not prepared to go out to work for a wage or a salary, no matter how small. At school they never considered the future and now that they are adults and perhaps their parents are signaling that they are not prepared to continue maintaining them, the boys are going out there to do what they think is the best thing.
I happened to be standing on Saffon Street when I heard gunshots. It turned out that someone had grabbed a chain from the neck of a licenced firearm holder. If grabbing the chain was a way to earn money it was surely a most dangerous way.
A few days earlier, two young men went to a home in Festival City. Perhaps they were unaware that the homeowner was there. They set about removing sections of the window to gain entry. At least one was shot, but he managed to escape only to turn up at the Georgetown Public Hospital a few hours later.
A schoolgirl is walking down the street with her cell phone. A car pulls up and a man gets out, confronts the girl. He eventually shoots her for the phone.
Some people talk about the broken moral fibre in the society and they are right. What we are seeing are the offspring of parents who also did not do anything at school. They are therefore incapable of instilling societal norms in their children.
What I fear is a return to the days when the police – so frustrated with some of the same criminals with a frequency that is astounding – would simply resort to being judge, jury and executioner. I have seen what this can lead to. And prison is not the solution. Young men enter those walls and come out worse.
Perhaps the solution rests in community action. Leaders in the society should be able to talk to the young in their midst and to direct them to productive activity. Buxton, for all the bad reputation it got, does not report armed robberies in the community. Criminals also do not target people there.
One reason for the increase in armed robberies may be rooted in women. Young men feeling their oats want to impress a young woman who, from all perspective, wants to look flashy. Georgetown has many of these and they encourage young men to help them sustain their desire to look flashy.
And this takes me back to what happens in the schools. At many secondary schools I see children outside the classrooms and even on the streets during the period when classes should be in progress. It could be that the teachers are away—probably attending the University of Guyana. This is the start of the process where children fail to grasp the need to learn.
The entire society needs revamping. School inspectors and the like are needed now more than ever. Perhaps if we improve the education system we would see a drastic decline in armed robberies.
And of course, the police come from the very system and some of them do commit robberies as was reported a few days ago. My publisher is convinced that the young people are learning from the national leaders whom he is convinced are also thieves.

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