Why vent frustration over crime on poor me?

Paolo Kernahan

BOLD street robberies, daring daylight business raids, brutal home invasions, cold-blooded murders – our days (not weeks or months) are punctuated with violent crime. It will only worsen with our collective silence.

Many citizens are searching for a messiah to lead them to salvation. When will our people wake up to their own power and influence?

Recently, I posted a video online expressing my rage at the violent, random cruelty of the murder of a pharmacy owner in Aranguez – a young man whose life, ambitions, struggles and promise were abruptly terminated with the muzzle flash of a gun.

The hope was that the video would inspire others to act on their simmering outrage and use their voices to force the change we so desperately need.

For the most part, that hasn't happened. What followed instead was a barrage of calls and text messages from strangers who somehow got my number.

From the crack of dawn to as late as nine in the night, I've been peppered with calls and messages – people wanting to unburden themselves on the topic of crime.

Many of these strangers never identify themselves. If I make the mistake of asking what specifically they want to talk about, these people have the effrontery to get short with me – to insult me!

Chew on that for a minute. People whom I've never met or spoken with, hitting me up out of nowhere and disrespecting me on my own wireless handset, and why?

Because I can't spend the better part of my day making myself available to them so they can lie on an analyst's couch with me for a spell.

It got even worse than that. In response to the video I posted about the murder in Aranguez, another Eddie Punchclock upbraided me for how I allocate my hours.

"Instead of wasting time doing a documentary series on the illicit trade, you should have done a documentary on crime in TT!"

I'm being fully serious here.

That person was referring to work I'd done for a client, work that pays my bills.

As an aside, if the individual in question had looked at the series on the illicit trade in this country, he would have realised that it contributes significantly to violent crime on this island. Still, he had all kinds of time and arrogance to be telling me what I should do and how it should be done.

Therein lies the problem; ordinary folks counselling me on what I should do or write about but doing nothing themselves. Many of these "advisers" won't personally speak out on the government's woeful incompetence and dangerous stupidity.

Their business or professional interests would be jeopardised by criticising the hand that feeds them. Consequently, they look to me to speak on their behalf as their cowardice and self-interest hold their tongues.

The voice of one man can't trigger the quality of change we need in this country.

I am an ordinary citizen with modest resources. As a self-employed person, I do what I can to condemn the tyranny and brazen ineptitude of this administration as well as our failings as a people because my conscience will permit no peace unless I do.

It would be wonderful if I had the freedom to function as the nation's on-call therapist.

Each call I field from a stranger is less time I have to pour into the work I do with my coaching clients. Venting with me privately about the high crime rate will accomplish nothing. I'm neither politician nor pastor, and I haven't been a journalist for nearly 15 years.

Take the same emotional turmoil – the same blistering frustration that prompted you to contact a complete stranger and write the failed and failing minister of national security, your Prime Minister, your MP – put your disgust in letters to the editor.

Better still, open the camera app on your phone and speak your fears, anxieties, disappointments and rage into that vessel. Share it across social media platforms.

Write a status update on Facebook about how crime stresses you out; how widespread insecurity has diminished your quality of life – what it has taken from you.

Useless politicians and criminals draw strength from your belief that you are powerless. The only way this red tide of crime will turn is when there is a chorus of condemnation of the failed governance and culture of criminality that has overtaken this country.