The gun and the human rights bodies are in sync

Aug 09, 2015 Features / Columnists, My Column

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The horror story these past few weeks was the killing of another elderly citizen by a young freak who seemed to have not one emotional bone in his body. The video recorded by the closed circuit camera was so shocking that only the most morbid would want to see it over and over again.
This woman was not known to have caused anyone to be angry with her, so it was shocking that out of the blue someone would want to take a huge lug spanner to her head. People saw the callous nature of the man who killed her. They also saw the planning that went into it.
What has the society become? Guyana was a country in which the young respected the elderly. As a boy growing up I dared not walk past an elderly person without offering a greeting. This is still the case in parts of rural Guyana where everyone is uncle, auntie or granny. Bartica is a joy to behold. No one walks past another without a greeting.
In fact I have no record of a young person killing an older person for no apparent reason. But in the city and its environs, this is becoming commonplace. It was the late Desmond Hoyte who said that the key to eradicating crime is to catch the perpetrators. Until recently, killers managed to escape. I must say that with the new dispensation arrests are frequent, with the result that violent crime has slowed, drastically.
There is the suspicion that the young killer, who the police say hailed from the city, was paid by someone to carry out the heinous act. How did this person who wanted the woman dead find someone willing to do this? Surely he/she did not go around asking. If he/she did share his/her intention with someone and that person helped him/her procure the killer, this person is equally guilty.
In the hours following the release of the video, a policeman was so sickened that he said that the solution rested with killing this sick person and doing so slowly. I must say that whenever there is certainty that the killer is in custody, he would face the courts, where he may get a sentence that could see him back on the streets in a few years, because we do not send people to the gallows these days.
One judge, recognizing the reluctance of the Guyana Government to send people to the gallows, hands down sentences that would keep the killer off the streets for the rest of his natural life. But this does not seem to be enough of a deterrent, because the killings still occur. For this year more than eighty people have been killed.
People in the developed world can actually sit back and talk about the inhumane behaviour of governments when they execute someone. They have even been joined by some local organisations. It is amazing that when it is time to give criminals their due, the various human rights organisations come out in a fury. I failed to notice any comment when that young animal killed the old woman.
It was the same when the gang killed the owner of the mall on Regent Street and beat the living daylights out of the land court judge and her husband.
Then there are the shootings. Some people in Plaisance confronted a suspected armed robber and one of them died. I am told that the person who got killed was a passerby. The shooter escaped, so we have another murder on our hands.
Such incidents allow for a nervous society. There are people who now stay off the streets unless they have something to do. The Private Sector Commission does not take this into consideration when it talks about a slowing down of business. In fact, it seeks to accuse the government of being responsible.
But then again, this is bound to happen, because there is tighter control on the parallel economy. Drugs are not flowing as it once did and those with ill-gotten gains have to worry about the anti-money laundering Act.
But back to the madness, the senseless killings. I remember the government offering an amnesty to people who have illegal guns. It was Bharrat Jagdeo who described this as a waste of time, because some people have two and three. They turn in one and easily procure another.
Thanks to the vigilance of the police, they have taken more than a few from the streets. The carriers are facing the courts, but with smart lawyers and the overcrowded jails they are soon back on the streets to continue until a conviction, which is uncertain.
I remember a young man named Randy Morris. He was arrested more than a dozen times and charged with all manner of crimes, some of them violent. He was never convicted so when he was killed he was conviction-free. There are many others like him who are around to continue their criminal activities.
Are more jails necessary? I think so, but then again the cost of maintaining these jails can go toward making life better for the rest of society. The solution rests with parents. They should talk to their children. Indeed peer pressure is a hell of a thing. I know. But a good parent can steer children away from a life of crime. I know this too.
It is a waste of time for a family to cry over a slain bandit then try to blame the people who killed him. And don’t blame poverty either. There is a lot of work out there, albeit menial tasks. In the foreign countries where we tend to take up residence we do anything offered, because there is no one to help us if we don’t have money. I meet a lot of Guyanese working in all manner of places and doing jobs that they would never have undertaken in Guyana.
In Guyana when the government pays the police better, I am certain that more and more people are going to seek money to pay lawyers to defend that errant child. What a waste of money.

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