The numbers do not tell about the terror

Jan 10, 2018 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

A family, according to reports on social media, was recently returning to their home when they were waylaid by an armed bandit who had secreted himself in their yard. They were taken, at gunpoint, into the house, and the husband placed under the bed, while the bandit demanded money and valuables from the wife. Later in the ordeal, the wife was forced to perform oral sex on the bandit.
Can you imagine the terrifying ordeal which that family went through? Can you imagine the trauma which that family will have to endure for the rest of their lives because of that incident? Can you imagine the psychological damage which that incident has inflicted on the members of this family?
It is all well and good to learn from the police high command that the incidence of serious crime has fallen. It is all nice to receive such assurances, but the reality is that what has happened to that family can happen to any family in Guyana, because of the actions of bandits who are roaming our streets with guns.
Guyanese are extremely vulnerable. No one knows if he or she will be the next victim. A contractor and a few of his employees were ambushed recently after they had left a bank at Diamond. He was robbed of his money at gunpoint. So, it is not just persons who go to commercial banks in the city that are being robbed. Persons who conduct transactions at banks outside of the city are also being attacked by bandits.
The police have also tried to downplay the high incidence of carjacking. They have reported that there were 47 cases of carjacking in the last three months of last year, an astonishing rate of one carjacking per every two days, in a country in which the ratio of cars to population is far below what exists in the developed world.
The number of cars per person in Guyana is less than three times that in Barbados. It is therefore astounding that a country with such a low ratio of cars per person should be having such an astounding high number of cases of carjacking. What is going to happen when that ratio increases?
Guyana has a serious crime problem. The numbers tell a frightening story, but the numbers do not always, also, tell the whole story, as we have seen in the case of rape victims.
Crime has been the bugbear of all governments. The intellectual arguments about the criminalized state are not comforting to those who on a daily basis have to live with the possibility that they will be the next victim.
There are too many criminals in Guyana. Too many persons are involved in crime. Crime is all around. People are stealing in offices. Students are stealing each other’s belongings in schools. Gone are the days when you can put down something, forget it, and come back the next day and find it. The society is highly criminalized. We have reached a state where people have very little moral scruples about persons associating with criminals. Some persons actually idolize criminals.
Persons are walking past your vehicle these days and they are peering inside to see if you have anything of value which they can steal. If you leave a bucket in your yard, you will be lucky to awake the next morning and find it.
Security costs are increasing even for the poor. Businesses now have to invest millions in CCTV cameras and in hiring security firms. Private citizens have to get dogs in order to try to prevent crime. These dogs have to be fed. This costs money.
And yet all we are hearing is about security sector reform. The British government cannot come and help us improve our crime rate. It will not bring down the numbers, much less reduce the fear in society.
The bulk of the resources which they are providing will go towards hiring their own consultants who have little experience of living in Guyana, and therefore knowing how to deal with the problem we have. Security sector reform has never helped with bringing down numbers. What helps is a different kind of policing.
The numbers which are being churned out by the Guyana Police Force about crime are of little comfort. The numbers do not tell the whole story of citizens living in a country in which they can be pounced upon at any time by criminals. The name of that country is Guyana.

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