The little things that go unreported

Aug 26, 2019 Editorial

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It is close to 6 a.m. on a weekday morning. A man walks along Brickdam.
He is hurrying for church, the peace of the sanctuary, and the praying that is a vital part of his faith, a stabilising presence in his life.
Four young men on two motorcycles ride up, stop, and corner. He does not run. He cannot, as there is nowhere to run and no one around. A gun is pushed roughly into his face. His hands are upraised in surrender in the rush of the moment. In the rush of the moment, there is no time for fear, or courage, or wisdom, or anything. It is that kind of moment on a still stirring morning on a peaceful street in Georgetown.
Young hands rush through his pockets and give him an expert body search, thorough and complete. They come up with nothing. There is nothing concealed, because there is nothing. Not a single penny. No watch. No ring. No jewellery. Just the basics of well-worn clothing. There is an aged, ‘dog-eared’, worse-for-the-wear hymn book. They pass on that one paltry picking. Then they are gone.
The next victim, perhaps? The next opportunity that may not come out so tranquilly, so bloodlessly. And because it was bloodless and painless and cashless, the victim held up at gunpoint went on his way, too. To his church. To his God. And to his faith. He gets to go back in one piece to his family. Thank the Almighty for small mercies.
There is one point to be made, the victim did nothing. He did not make a report to the Guyana Police Force. He did not issue an all-points bulletin on Facebook. He did not take to the media. He did absolutely nothing. And because he is the reserved type, not one for anything to do with soapbox or limelight, he shared his trauma with very few.
And because he did nothing, he is not only a victim without a face; he is crime statistics without a number, without any trace or record. He just isn’t, with regards to crime. Real crime. The so-called sensationalising of crime. The perception of crime. Now if this quiet, simple, God-fearing man is not a crime fact, then what is? And if, indeed, he and his ordeal of looking into the barrel of a gun, surrounded by four menacing men, is a crime fact-palpable and frightening, contradicting and disabusing, then the next question is this: how many more crime facts are there like his? Those would be the ones that happen in the blink of an eye, and with the numbness of the violated, a reminder. Serious crime it may be not (however defined), except for the survivor.
In the numbers game of statistics and official reckonings, there is seriousness of honest counts and there is, shall we say, the reality of those that go unreported, hence uncounted. Not because the brass is looking to skew the numbers or present them in the brightest light. But because humble, decent, and thankful men and women, who have to walk the streets every day in their unsung ordinariness, move forward as part of the escape and defense mechanism of blocking out, and of resigning to the realities that have become so commonplace in Guyana, and especially in the capital city of Georgetown and its environs. Stoic resignation. Why?
To visit the precinct to lodge a report leads where, does what? There is that fatalism. To relive the horror, and the specter of what could have been (the worst), is best left alone. Here is a suspicion: the robbers report to cooperative officer first and part with a piece of the action. The victims move on. Mostly, these are working, struggling people. Their livelihood is entwined in making a living. They must turn up. To what purpose the police? That might be an injustice to the GPF. But it is the reality of not reporting, too.
How many more unreported? In Brickdam and Kitty and Cummingsburg and Stabroek? Things add up; they multiply. They tell a different story. Cumulatively, they might not be so insignificant. Just like the spousal abuses never heard of officially. That is, until they are in the most harrowing ways. In sections of Georgetown, security personnel attached to private offices stand on the streets as deterrent aimed at protecting staff during the times near arrival and departing. In every place, all citizens are targeted; but one disturbing accompaniment reported is of slurs and inferences of a racial, political nature; has an elections hint.
Politicians live with numbers; ministers have gone public to report decline in serious crime. Indeed, there is. There are, also, those serious ones impacting spirit and psyche that never register on the radars. Regular people live out there with reality and the dangers and fears and that go with them.

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