Joyce Lewis and Yvonne Adams both lived alone, Lewis in North Ruimveldt and Adams in Linden. Both, as far as we know, were in their seventies, elderly and vulnerable. Adams was a remigrant whom, it appears, chose to return to Guyana to spend her advanced years. From what we are told Lewis, a widow, had relatives overseas and had only recently entertained some of them at her North Ruimveldt home.
Within their respective communities it would have been known that they lived alone. Moreover, what may be described as their ‘overseas’ connections would not have gone unnoticed by those with mischief on their minds.
Crimes like the killing of these two senior citizens, cold and clinical as they were, attract a fair measure of public attention, even anxiety. That might moreso be the case in these particular instances given that the killings occurred quickly on the heels of each other. What might be of particular concern here is the likelihood that the killings may be indicative of an emerging pattern of crimes that targets elderly live-alones, particularly remigrants and others who might have possessions worth stealing.
In that context, these two killings may well have been taken note of particularly among our home-based elderly live-alones and among Guyanese in the diaspora who may be contemplating extended holidays at home and retirees, perhaps without families, who might be considering remigration or even actively planning their imminent permanent return to the land of their birth.
All of this must be seen against the backdrop of the prevailing lack of public confidence in the effectiveness of policing in Guyana and the general sense that our personal safety depends as much on a measure of luck coupled with our ability to protect ourselves by one means or another as it does on such protection as is forthcoming from the police. If such sentiments are unlikely to secure the endorsement of the Force, they do reflect a fair measure of public opinion and it is for the police to take such action as is necessary to alter that opinion.
While no amount of police work can undo the abhorrent, gut-wrenching nature of the two recent crimes, they put before the new Commissioner and the Force both a challenge and an opportunity. On the one hand the two murders could add to the existing Augean Stables of unsolved crimes which the new Commissioner has inherited. On the other, quick breakthroughs arising out of professional police work and which lead to arrests, trials and convictions may well help to calm nerves amongst vulnerable groups, particularly senior citizens. Indeed, it is for the new Commissioner and the Force to decide whether the coincidence between the appearance of a new man at the helm and these two terrible crimes might not provide the ideal opportunity for the Force to send a signal to its various audiences that it is ready to draw a definitive line in the sand in the matter of its performance.
A particularly disturbing feature of contemporary crime patterns is, on the one hand, the impunity with which criminals strike and on the other, the disparity between serious crimes and arrests and convictions. Certainly, there appears to have been a fair measure of impunity in the killings of Ms Lewis and Ms Adams.
Taken together, the range of public concerns that arise out of these two killings provide more than sufficient incentive for the police to want to tackle the investigations with equal measures of professionalism, determination and a commitment to getting positive results in the shortest possible time. Those outcomes may not alter the image of the Force overnight but could provide as a good a platform as any on which the new Commissioner can hope to begin his tenure.
