Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 26/Sep 05:35

Are some murders unpreventable?

PAOLO KERNAHAN The idea of certain homicides being beyond prevention by law enforcement isn’t new — and it certainly isn’t any less abhorrent than it was the first time I heard it. Defence Minister Wayne Sturge recently echoed this sentiment — "There are certain types of murders you can never prevent.” He was speaking in relation to the recent horrific killing of teenager Mariah Seenath, a child who loved football and was erased from existence in the senseless way that so many children before her were taken from their parents. Even if I spent the rest of my life trying to understand what Mariah’s parents are enduring right now, I don’t think I would ever come close. Sturge likely didn’t mean to offend, but given the dismissive, insensitive nature of the remark, that’s probably how it was perceived. There are bigger problems with the minister’s utterance. Similar statements were made by his predecessors; among them were individuals accepted as proven failures in the ongoing battle for a more law-abiding and less violent society. Sturge knows this. It’s difficult for any objective person to read his remark as anything other than an attempt to categorise homicides in a way that absolves the state of responsibility. Way back in 2017, former prime minister Keith Rowley, in response to a rash of domestic violence killings, advised that women should pick their male companions wisely. “...I am not in your bedroom, I am not in your choice of men.” His words traded on the notion that the police can’t be everywhere, nor can they divine the evil that lurks in the hearts of men, such that they would commit heinous acts of violence against women and children. This, however, is also true of most types of violent crime. Police officers will rarely know in advance of a home invasion that might result in the deaths of the occupants. They couldn’t anticipate when gunmen would ambush Dr Dorothy Williams-Chandler, one of the first female surgeons in this country, and take her life. [caption id="attachment_1180609" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Paolo Kernahan -[/caption] Most police work in the realm of homicides hinges on post-mortem investigations rather than interdiction. So, if we are to extrapolate Sturge’s assertion to other homicides of varying motivations, then all murders are unpreventable. Naturally, no society should accept such a mindset, even if we have become inured over time to the impact of brutal murders. All murders are unacceptable — but they’re not all equal. Statistics are hard to come by, but there is some evidence that crimes of violence against women and children are increasing. Reports of child abuse (including assault and sexual offences) range between four and five thousand per year. Asami Nagakiya, Andrea Bharatt, Shannon Banfield — how many final straws has this country tolerated? How many candlelight vigils have there been meant to mark a watershed moment in violence against women? Gang violence, home invasions and robberies can be explained by greed, socioeconomic disequilibrium, political ineptitude and corruption, the insidious influence of the drug trade, etc. We can’t explain Sean Luke, Akil Chambers and now Mariah Seenath, nor can we dismiss them as anomalies beyond the “protective” fold of law enforcement. In many ways, violent crimes against women and children in a society as small as ours should be of equal, if not greater concern than carjackings and home push-ins. They speak to a depravity beyond the motivations of money and street power. What we’re experiencing and dismissing as unpreventable murders is the collateral damage of the broken window theory. Law and order are so badly dysfunctional that contempt for the tenets of a law-abiding society has overrun the institutions meant to abjure violence. As the value of life is diminished, more people feel confident that they won’t be held accountable for their crimes. This confidence is showing up in increasingly perverse ways. It’s tempting to conclude, based on statistical trends, that the chip in most people’s brains preventing us from acting impulsively, indulging primal urges, or responding almost immediately with violence in heated situations is outdated. People are making the leap from anger to murder and from lust to predation more rapidly because the link between actions and consequences has been severed. The police cannot be omnipresent, but it is the state’s responsibility to create an environment of absolute intolerance towards violence in every form it takes. If some murders are unpreventable, then all are unpreventable — which simply isn’t true. We don’t have to settle for a nation where the murder of a child is shrugged off as "just the way it is."   The post Are some murders unpreventable? appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.