Dear Editor,
There is an unconfirmed report that one dry water cannon has been sent to GWI for servicing and eventual preservation. In its place will be a SWAT. What’s that, but the result of the not unusual knee-jerk reaction to events that have not been comprehensively analysed, with a view to formulating a more relevant strategy?
Moreso, SWAT as an operational unit is very likely to be composed of the same ineffectual elements of the existing martial dispensation. The implication is that the human resources capacity from which a prospective Serious Crime Unit must be structured will be similarly handicapped.
An honest review of the track record of a persistently emasculated ‘force’ would show that its inefficiency is markedly due to the lack of any articulated intelligence, in the most profound meaning of the word. The sound of empty barrels therefore reverberates regularly in the form of reckless official gunfire, hardly distinguishing between the ‘lawful’ and the perceived ‘lawless’.
The question which arises is how can one set of defectives wean out the suspect polluters, particularly when the latter discern the former to be so to the extent that the consequences may be the creation of a counter-swat?
The intended (not contemplated) redressive action does not appear to be founded on the requisite sociological investigation. No one has asked whether or not any qualified criminologist has contributed to the particular decision-making process.
Even the ‘Opposition’ has been (a)pathetic in a conceptualisation which apportions sole responsibility for the rehabilitation, indeed salvation, of unemployed, errant, leaderless, futureless youthful victims of today’s dispensation, to the other side of the House- a sort of single parenting.
Their cluelessness has however illogically attracted blame for deepening, if not quite creating, the yawning sociological fault lines in our differentiated communities.
How serious indeed are our disabled, and our dis-abilities?
Yours faithfully,
E.B. John
