Reports reaching Guyana from our sister CARICOM member country, Trinidad and Tobago, suggests that there is something almost surreal about the seemingly ceaseless orgy of violence, underpinned by routine targeted executions, reportedly a manifestation of the proliferation of gruesome ‘gang wars’ in which clinical ‘terminations’ have become the order of the day.
We, in the various other CARICOM countries – some of us with our own fair share of crime notwithstanding – can only recoil in horror as the media in the twin-island Republic ‘serve up’ what, these days, are daily bizarre ‘helpings’ of occurrences involving indiscriminate reported ‘gang wars’ perpetrated by cliques of heavily armed and ruthless gangs of killers who, in many instances, appear to have grafted a generous measure of grizzliness onto their crimes. Here, one of the recent episodes that stand out is the reported ‘visit’ to a hospital in Port of Spain by a gang of gunmen reportedly bent on ‘finishing’ a wounded adversary from a (rival?) gang.
Reportage emanating from Port-of-Spain sometimes appears to suggest that some of these occurrences may have to do with what we in Guyana call ‘bad business’ in which members of the substantive business community are reportedly involved.
What is decidedly disturbing is that the armed gangs, while having gotten the attention of the local security forces, are sufficiently well-organized, well-armed and suitably determined to become ‘a match’ for the country’s security forces so that, seemingly, the issue of gang violence and the gruesome killings that would appear to have become commonplace in Trinidad and Tobago have become one of the primary preoccupations of both the country’s Prime Minister, Dr. Keith Rowley, as well as its first ever female Commissioner of Police, Erla Christopher.
There are times when the crime spree that appears to obtain in Trinidad and Tobago manifests itself in bizarre headline-hitting episodes, one of those being the earlier mentioned ‘visit’ to a hospital by a gang of gunmen apparently bent on ‘finishing’ a member of a rival gang. A more recent one (reported in the Trinidad Express, August 6th) has to do with the ‘execution’ of a woman, Victoria Guerra, alias “Dolly Boss” who, according to Express report, “is alleged to be a gang member.” Whatever the cause of the current seeming spate of bloodletting in Trinidad and Tobago, the gruesomeness is surely a message to the rest of the Caribbean, not least, Guyana, where what, these days, appears to be an upsurge in crime attended by increasingly searching questions that continue to arise about the capacity of the Force to rein in the problem. Perhaps even more worrying is what has become the increasingly loudly touted view that there exists a compelling case for an urgent and energetic probe into the state of readiness of our own Guyana Police Force to respond to the country’s urban crime profile.
Some may even go as far as to say that the Force’s own dysfunctional profile which frequently attracts outbreaks of boisterous ‘public’ noise to which there is very little in the way of meaningful official response is the real problem facing the Force.
These days it appears increasingly as though it is the Guyana Police Force itself that must embrace the ‘physician heal thyself’ refrain.
