Trust must come first

THE EDITOR: Two issues have arisen of late in the media and I hope to explore the nuances of each. The first has to do with a learned judge’s urging that citizens with information of criminal behaviour should come forward and share it with the police.

On the one hand, there can be no more sound advice if a dent is to be made on the runaway crime situation. But context here is critical, as it was with the hijab issue.

Can a citizen be reasonably called upon to exercise his/her civic duty in the face of an unreliable witness programme or a situation where witnesses are certain to be eliminated having shared information with corrupt officers in league with criminals that can easily backfire to their demise? Or, being part of a community, to trust it with such a decision, only to experience the fate of the squealer or a snitch?

The case of the watermelon vendor being shot dead for having witnessed a crime tells a whole story. So the learned judge’s call for citizens to do their civic duty is a just call, but only for a society where law prevails and not one in which the criminal mindset is that crime pays and can be committed with impunity.

It is no wonder that Kevin Ram and Grace Williams in the Express could be as cynical as they both are about the judge’s call, the one in his letter captioned “Lives at risk with crooked cops m’lud,” sniping at the judge’s own security while others may be courting death heeding his call, and the other in “Protect the witnesses first,” similarly outraged, scoffing at the judge’s presumption of a society where law abounds and calling for more effective witness protection.

As to the other issue involving the death of man at the hands of citizens suspecting him of a criminal act, vigilante behaviour cannot be condoned in any civilised society where law is functional and effective, but the extent to which we are may help to explain what precipitated this kind of behaviour.

The issues with the judge’s call above show why citizens may hesitate to give information to the police, but it also helps to foster the public perception that there can be no redress from the law which in turn drives people in their desperation to act the way they do, as in this instance.

It is easy for those in authority to quote that there is no justification for excessive force no matter what the criminality, which is true in a situation of normalcy. But if a culture of criminality has been made to fester and become all-pervasive by an unprecedented ineptness in those who are sworn to protect and serve the citizens, to whom can the people turn except themselves?

Another home invasion has taken place in the South and another wife and mother has been raped with her loved ones to witness. There can be no equal in human suffering for the victims, but the bigger question is how did the criminals reach that mental state to be so lawless and unconscionable.

We can appeal as much as we want for people to come forward and give evidence and cry foul against desperate people taking the law into their own hands but those charged with the duty to protect and serve the people, from politicians to the police, from the bench to the pulpit, must be seen first as fulfilling their part of their social contract, and so build trust with the people.

DR ERROL BENJAMIN

docbenj742@outlook.com