Are criminal gangs politically motivated? Is there one criminal gang or many? Do media houses coordinate their presentation of the news about crime? Many persons have asked these questions over the past three months.

Prime Minister Samuel Hinds was one of the most senior administration officials to put forward his pet assumption to explain the motivation behind the Lusignan killings in January. Unhesitatingly, he told the media that it was “clearly a racial problem.” He was immediately contradicted by Presidential Adviser on Governance Gail Teixeira who took pains to point out that the issue of whether the killers were of one ethnic group or another was irrelevant. In any event, she admitted that the culprits had not been identified by ethnicity and, “We can’t tell that as we weren’t there.”…..