Say no to street justice

THE EDITOR: Not a protest was heard, not a tyre burnt as the body of Aniah Mc Cloud was buried. This two-year-old and her 39-year-old father met their fate at the hands of street justice or street rage, no one knows for sure.

For the many who felt it necessary to burn tyres and create havoc in search of justice for three slain members of the Morvant community, these two lives did not matter. Justice for them was not important.

When PC Allen Moseley was killed in Morvant, his fate too was settled through violence in the streets. There was no cry for justice for this young policeman. For many he either deserved his fate or his life was not important enough to warrant a cry for justice.

To the objective onlooker it seems that death at the hands of criminals is justifiable or at the very least acceptable. Such deaths do not deserve protests or cries for justice. Death at the hands of those who place their lives at risk daily to maintain order in our society is another story.

If one is killed by the police where there are many levels of statutory investigations to facilitate justice, such action almost always solicits immediate protests and acts of lawlessness in the pursuit of justice.

Justice is a major fundamental of civil society. To ensure transparency and fairness there are levels of investigations and procedures that seek to arrive at a fair evaluation of what really happened. Anything less leads to anarchy.

Those who are calling for the heads of the policemen involved in the killing of the three Morvant men seem to have already arrived at a conclusion that the police are guilty. They are very unlikely to be convinced otherwise. That is what makes such a situation exceedingly difficult and dangerous.

If the only acceptable solution is the heads of those who they accuse of a wrongdoing, then the calls for justice is hollow. Real justice will mean that the accused are either guilty or innocent. It also means that after a careful impartial evaluation of the evidence an impartial judicial system will render a verdict of guilty or not guilty. That is the way a civilised society operates.

There may be occasions where the system will get it wrong. That is the nature of most things in life, but vigilante and street justice is wrong and leads to disorder.

As the protests of Tuesday escalated in Port of Spain, citizens were comforted by the presence of the police and soldiers as they sought to maintain order in our country. The very police that were seen by many as the reason for the protests were asked to once again forget the value of their own lives and go on the frontline confronting angry protesters to restore order.

We the people of TT must be firm in our support of our law enforcement officers. As a developing nation where we hope our children and their families will call home, we cannot compromise the value of organised, structured justice for mob rule. We must not only have faith in our system of justice but make every effort to improve its efficiency.

Over the years I have come to realise that democracy does not always get us the best management, but it is the best we have at this time. We will not always arrive at the best decisions when members of our community are killed by anyone, but we must trust that as an orderly society our system of justice will see the perpetrators pay for their ill deeds.

That is what the DPT. stands for. No one, no politician, activist, religious leader, or ordinary citizen should accept lawlessness as a replacement for law and order. Law enforcement must be swift, uncompromising, strong, and diligent as order is maintained in our country.

STEVE ALVAREZ

political leader, DPTT