Yes, it’s comedy season

THE EDITOR: Are we as a society losing it? Over the last few decades our crime situation has deteriorated with hundreds of murders yearly.

Then there’s the easily available guns in the wrong hands, the extensive use of illegal drugs even among our secondary school students, our widespread custom of drinking and driving with all its serious consequences, added to which we are now witnessing the worst case of non-co-operation since independence between the two groups that occupy our Parliament, even as citizens are being beaten, robbed, raped and murdered left, right and centre.

And in the face of all this cruelty, we still complain about the clothes our Commissioner of Police is wearing when he hits the road and faces the bullets of hardened criminals. This is the comedy season, right?

Let’s face the facts. After former commissioner Randolph Burroughs, Gary Griffith is only other commissioner to have stepped down to that grassroots level and taken the fight to the criminals.

Given our present crime state, whether white collar, blue collar, red or yellow collar, we have to be out of our minds to be argumentative about a police commissioner (who we normally associate with office work) in a certain style of dress when facing the criminals or even the media.

Why didn’t we ask a certain loquacious trade union leader to discard life jackets and accompanying boats when he took his bogus swim from Tobago to Trinidad? Why don’t we ask Members of Parliament to stop turning that honourable House into a rum shop and get serious with the people’s business? Why don’t we ask former and present government officials to come clean with all the serious accusations against them?

Given the meticulous defence by today’s lawyers of alleged murderers, even if found guilty and additional appeals fail, with “human rights activists” waiting to further shield them (the convicted) from the punishment our laws require, do we really now pity the killers more than the victims?

When it comes to how to handle those merciless criminals, Gary Griffith is leading by example.

LLOYD RAGOO, Chaguanas