Coil:Fear of crime and contemplating edible skulls in Georgetown

Altar at the Embassy of Mexico, Dia de lost Muertos exhibition, 3 Nov, 2016

by Vidyaratha Kissoon

“I see that 14 year old boy who killed that woman, and I don’t understand. Did the adult force him into it? “ a woman asked as we talked about crime.

What is happening in Guyana is anyone’s guess. According to the police, crime figures are ‘down’. 

Most people do not believe the police.

The media, especially social media is full of stories of break ins and attempted break ins, of robberies. The robbery is ‘daring’ – daylight, in public spaces – outside city hall, in the busy commercial areas.

Guns are in use. Some people report being sprayed with gas or some sleeping drug.

No one wants to be the next reduced crime statistic. No one expects that their trauma and fear would be lost in numbers which people do not believe, that regardless of the pain and the horror, that the trauma is to be explained away with ‘oh but it better than last year’.

Fear and anger are around. A patriotic woman I know said ‘I glad to get out’ after suffering a break-in at her house, and a man snatching her chain on a busy street. She was in the grey area between staying and going and she opted to leave to go to a place where 911 works.

What support does the President , Minister of Public Security and the Guyana Police Force offer people like Gail Atkinson. Bandits attacked her and her children early, outside her home. Places which were safe, are not safe.

The Embassy of Mexico had the Dia de los Muertos exhibition from Nov 1 to 3. The Mexican celebration amongst other things is meant to relieve the fear of death – and to understand in the Aztec tradition, that death was a continuation of life. The tradition includes candy in the shape of skulls as the consumption of the skulls is a metaphor for consuming ‘death and the negative emotions of death

In Mexico, people go to the graves of their loved ones. There are celebrations of life.

It would be nice to confront the fear of crime here in Guyana by eating candy made guns . Fear of crime is one of those effects of living in places where you cannot trust the government, the police and where it is difficult to believe that things are not bad like this time last year. The University of West Indies has an ongoing study “Crime Victimisation and Fear of Crime Survey” which examines the relationship between citizen’s insecurity and the crime rates. Maybe the police in Trinidad can be trusted with their data.

There is violence which is not criminal – like the big salaries to stop the Ministers from stealing, and the Guyana Marriott hotel and the concrete bottom Kitty Market and the Parking Meter contract and the monies to Comrade Larry for the bond.

The anger at the legal violence and the fear of wondering if you would get into the way of a bandit with or without a gun make it difficult, stressful to live in Guyana. What toll is this stress taking? 

How much is the investment in dealing with insecurity and how do feelings of powerlessness in the face of crime and the legal violence inhibit our ability to progress?

President Granger seems to think that too many “legal” and “illegal” guns are in the hands of private citizens, and said this in the week that one private citizen reportedly killed an armed intruder identified as a contractor, Elijah De Florimonte.

The President and his team might be interested in how a contractor moves easily to armed robbery in the Golden Jubilee year. The man’s father indicated a life of home, a bed, drinking and liming with friends, and some work.

A journalist, Thandeka Percival, on her Facebook page recorded an encounter with a citizen. The citizen asked her f the President understood that the citizens are traumatized, and that the bandits don’t seem scared of consequences.

The Minister of Public Security has solutions like use plastic and to pay taxes.

The Minister has probably been able to make it easy and cheap it for people in the market, and other small business vendors to set up credit card systems so that it would be convenient not to use cash.

Some criminals have been charged and some have been convicted. Other criminals have had appeals and others have benefited from weak prosecutions.

Young Sherwin Clerk and Godfrey Gill have been charged for murder, they were also charged for robbery. Two youths were jailed for 3 months after being found in a house. That did not seem to deter Twenty Six year old Junior Alleyne who was also caught in the act and remanded for trial. Another ‘juvenile’ was shot while fleeing with a handbag belonging to someone else. Earlier in the year, a girl and a young woman were charged for murdering a man they knew. Another teenager was charged for murdering a man who allegedly abused him and another teenager was instructed by his father to kill their neighbour in Black Bush Polder.

There is no news about whether any of these youths participated in any of the youth things which were held for the Golden Jubilee. There is no news on any engagement between these youths and the Presidential Advisor on Youth Empowerment which might guide some of the crime prevention strategies.

How much does a young person need to stop them from tiefing? We pay the Ministers a lot of money in the hope that they will not be ‘corrupt‘ – like $10million a year plus perks.

Are the forensic audits, and the SOCU and SARU movements meant to be distractions from the bandits beating up business people, from robbers pulling guns on people leaving the bank? Should SOCU and SARU take time out from chasing after people who did their stuff legally to find out why people disrupting the Good Life in the Green Economy?

In the last decade or so, I have been robbed 4 times, once in daylight on a temporarily empty street in a busy area, three times in early evening before 7pm I do not feel safe when walking around. I probably take more taxis than I should. I avoid Georgetown down town on Sunday afternoons – a lot of empty streets. Waterloo Street looks beautiful to walk on around 2pm on a week day afternoon – but men on a motorcycle had snatched a man’s camera when he was taking a picture of Christ Church and the last time I walked there I was alert, and vigilant. But then , busy places are also scenes of crime. So there is no real place to relax and enjoy the walk. Bandits lurk in minibuses so I always checking who is behind me. Yep, I am paranoid.

The area where I live has had random attacks – we know of afternoon and day time attacks in homes and on the road.

We have had nice people down the road charged for gun running. A man who drove his car and killed another man has a business up the road. I wonder if he will kill someone when driving in the area.

One man who looks after a disabled man cusses up the neighbours, so the neighbours are constantly on alert. One elderly woman does not sleep at night . The man has been in prison but the prayers and rehabilitation in prison did not seem to work. He might go berserk one day and attack his neighbours. Jainarine Balgobin killed his neighbour after coming home from the Albion police station. There are reports that the cause of this crime might not be poverty or unemployment. Neighbours had been concerned about the man.

In places, neighbours hear sounds of crime, but can’t do anything. Maybe the police need to link up with GTT and GPL and send out all the phone numbers for all the senior officers and police stations in the next set of bills mailed out, when 911 does not work.

The Aztecs and the descendants of the Aztecs celebrated death as part of life this past week.

Is living on the edge, living in fear , going to a continuous part of the good life for all Guyana? Is our inability to treat all crime and violence as equal forcing us to just be afraid or on edge all the time?