Dear Editor,
It was some time during the early-mid 1970s that I enjoyed watching a movie titled The Sting, the thrust and cut of which was an elaborate scheme by some people to con, steal or rob others of their money.
By public demand, The Sting was shown for several weeks at the Astor – I believe. I remembered that during the time that the movie was being shown, there was a story titled ‘Stung Before The Sting’ in one of the daily publications. To this day I believe that it is still one of the better newspaper stories that I have read. The word ‘sting’ was used in a context to mean, to steal, or to cheat or con an unsuspecting victim. Therefore, since stung is the past tense of sting, it means that to be stung is to be stolen from.
Why stung before the sting? Because the story tells of a patron who in a desperate struggle in a line to purchase a ticket to get into the cinema to see the movie, was unwittingly robbed before he reached the ticket booth. So before he could have seen The Sting, he was stung of his money. How contradictory!
That apart, some time in 1989 I befriended a gentleman name Aazad from Trinidad and Tobago in a semi-regimented setting. Every day at lunch time he would consume what he prepared for dessert before he ate what he prepared for the main course. In quite a jocular tone of voice, he would say, “Boy Francis, yuh think ah funny nuh? I eating dessert before meals, ah hungry bad bad.” Indeed, I thought that Aazad was funny because it was the same thing he said and did over and over day after day, and I kept asking myself, how could dessert come before lunch?
I had forgotten both incidents which are now decades old, but my knowledge of them was refreshed by a most despicable incident which occurred recently. After all I could live with being stung before the sting and I could live with dessert coming before lunch, but I cannot live with being imprisoned before birth.
Yes! That is exactly what happened to the unborn child of Ms Michelle Lynch when she was recently arrested and made to sleep in the lock-ups of a police station. On receipt of that news which speaks of nothing short of barbarism by the police, my first reaction was to ask what manner of person would treat a pregnant woman like that? Are the ranks who were responsible for such a cowardly decision born of a mother? Do they have wives and sisters?
The police have certainly inflicted serious psychological harm on Ms Lynch. Should it be mentioned how revolting it was to have treated Ms Lynch the way the police did? I think that this matter leaves volumes of questions unanswered and severe doubts that the much vaunted reform of the GPF would result in improved relations with the public any time soon. After all, this most brutal treatment meted out to Ms Lynch is not an isolated incident.
Some of us would recall that in 2007 a female police rank was chastised for shaving the heads of two female teenage ‘runaways.’ And just the other day a woman with a “nursing baby” was detained at a police station for almost an entire day while her children were left unprotected and hungry at home. I am forced to wonder how do those police ranks who are mothers feel about incidents like these?
It may not appear to be so, but the wrongful imprisonment of Ms Lynch’s unborn child is yet another indication that reasonableness has long departed from the Guyana Police Force which has sunk to an unprecedented level.
Yours faithfully,
Francis Carryl
