And after the barriers?
Editorial
Stabroek News
February 3, 2003
The government’s decision last week to block two accesses to the villages of Buxton/Friendship is as much an admission of failure in dealing with crime as it is stepped up protection for the tortured citizens of Annandale, Vigilance and other communities.
Erecting the barriers will clearly bring some relief to Annandalians and others who have been under siege by armed gangs from the Buxton/ Friendship area and for that reason they must be seen as a welcome even if desperate act by the government and the security forces in the wake of the continuing abominations. The rationale for the barriers is that car-borne and bicycle gangs will be unable to use these roads as escape routes as they have been doing with impunity in recent months.
Inevitably, the barriers were a source of discontent among some. Residents of Buxton/Friendship criticised them. Also at the barricades last week were the Chairman of Region Four Alan Munroe, and the Chairman of the Buxton/Foulis Neighbourhood Democratic Council, Randolph Blair, who also criticized the barriers and said residents should have been consulted. Neither Mr Munroe nor Mr Blair have been prominently visible in helping to mobilise their constituents to root out the criminal enterprise that has taken hold of Buxton/Friendship and is spreading its tentacles into neighbouring villages. Perhaps in addition to complaining about the barriers, Mr Munroe should pay more visits to Annandale, Vigilance, Coldingen and other villages, which also fall within his purview as Region Four Chairman, to learn of the great fears that these residents have about the crime being launched from within Buxton/Friendship.
But what will the barriers accomplish? It is a sad commentary on the state of the nation that we have begun to put physical barriers between our villages in this painfully inept fight against crime. Whatever little decent contact existed between the residents of these diverse villages has now been cut off in the name of law enforcement. The many law-abiding citizens of Buxton/Friendship will be inconvenienced by the barriers and other communities may take the lead from the government and attempt this same technique. The prospect of walled off communities and the further damage they could do to national togetherness looms.
Fighting the type of crime that has been launched from bases in Buxton/Friendship cannot be accomplished by merely putting barriers at strategic points. The criminals have shown a clear determination over the last 11 months or so to find a way to break out of strangleholds. Already while things have been relatively peaceful on the East Coast in the last week or two, there have been two brutal murders in Sophia and a robbery. Bandits in ones and twos can easily shift the base of their operations to another front with a little imagination and support.
Waiting at the barricades and guarding them will yield nothing. When the criminals are ready to break out and commit a new outrage they will do so. The criminals will also be comforted and aided by the thought that the security forces, too, will be unable to traverse the blocked thoroughfares in any law enforcement operation.
The barriers standoff brings into sharp focus the underlying weakness of the crime-fighting campaign by the police and the army. They have had little insight into the movements, locations and strategies of the bandits so that they could launch pre-emptive strikes and arrest those who have committed crimes. Much of their operations depend on opportunistic confrontations with bandits and suspects.
Since it now has a pronounced presence in Buxton/Friendship, Guyanese had expected that the army would have been able to arrest wanted men and prevent incursions into other communities. The army has signally failed to do this. Following the President’s admonition that there should be a rethinking of crime-fighting strategies, the entire nation awaits the results. Waiting at the barriers won’t do it.
