The stories of young men being killed under suspicious circumstances by police are continuously being written in Guyana. They often play out in live action, captured on CCTV or cellphone cameras, except those murdered do not rise to change costumes or remove makeup. The plot is familiar – they were resisting arrest, or they were caught in the act of committing a crime, they shot at the police, or they tried to run. The scenes played out often tell us that one bullet in the arm or leg of a man to slow him down or disarm him is often not considered in these storylines. When the faces of criminals and the faces of police merge into one, a society is in trouble. Unfortunately, we passed the point of trouble ages ago and are now stuck in a cycle of crisis. We would like to believe that we have seen the worst of police murdering citizens of this country. After all there was a time when these stories made the headlines often. But the world is a cycle and in the fragile state in which we exist, where many miscreants are groomed by the negative influences in society, we are always at risk of history repeating itself.
