By Raffique Shah
August 17, 2024

It was the Freeport address that piqued my interest. Six bandits (the police did not use “alleged”) shot dead in Freeport. Normally I would pay passing attention to such reports since the killing fields of criminals operating in this country can be anywhere, given our small size.

I paid closer attention now as I sat talking with my brother, Feroze, trying to figure out if we knew any of those who were killed by the police earlier that day, as we’d spent most of our lives in what I call “Greater” Freeport. As the television presenter continued with what was little more than a routine story, I realised the culprits did not belong to Freeport. They had, in fact, rented the house in a district that had expanded way beyond what I knew it to be. For all we know, one could be from Cedros and another, Toco.

So we are learning that the criminal enterprise is expanding day by day to virtually every housing settlement in Trinidad and Tobago. Their stomping ground is not confined to communities they may have grown up in, and the victims of their beastly behaviour could be you or me or anybody else.

It is frightening. Just think: you are walking on your main street, minding your business, when suddenly the brakes of cars screech, people in the vicinity looking to get out of the way of yet another attack. You are not safe inside your homes, at your place of work, while driving in your personal vehicle or using public transport, going to work or for a leisurely lime—hell, sleeping in your bloody bed, you are not safe.

Outside there—meaning anywhere and everywhere in the country—is not just unsafe, but deadly killing grounds. The rate at which we are descending into total disorder signals that the criminals know no boundaries. Not a church or a mosque or a mandir is sacred ground. The age of a child has no impact morally on them. How the hell did we reach here?

I sat dumbfounded as my brain went into overdrive while my brother and I conversed. Much of our early lives was spent in “Greater” Freeport—from McBean in the south to Chase Village in the north, Chickland, Arena in the east, and Waterloo-on-the-Sea to the west. When we were lads riding with our “posses”, or so we convinced ourselves, every “badjohn” from within and beyond our boundaries was known to us. There was some pride in being from Freeport and knowing these men. They were not like the savages of today who show total disregard, shooting to kill anyone—age and gender being no barrier.

These mainly young maggots who chose to operate out of Freeport, my home town, would trigger no more than a feeling of disgust from the cavemen of my boyhood days—Ozzie and Daley, Pilgrim and Critchlow, Stanley and Abidh, to name a few of the badjohns of my day. Some were criminals, yes, but largely the “badjohn” was someone who lived in the district and who would look down on others-in-crime who breached the codes of conduct—the respect for senior and elders, and the inviolability of children.

In those glory days, badjohns were oftentimes genuine community leaders who roughed up politicians as they fought, literally at times, for their fellow citizens. Today’s sorry young criminals owe no loyalty to, or respect for, the wombs from which they emerged. They are neither just inhuman nor animalistic, since animals have codes; they are devoid of empathy.

If we must move to rid society of this plague that has descended on us, we must first agree that the war we wage must see all of us united in the army of humanity. Indeed, for us to justify the kind of war that is required to liquidate the aliens, we must weed out the traitors in our ranks who lend support to the “Raiders of the Ark”. It matters not that they are ministers of government or the captains of commerce, police or thieves.

Big question: who bring in the guns and tonnes of ammunition? Wipe them off the face of the earth! They are the source of our demise. They import the guns knowing that they will be used against you and me.

You see, this fight against crime that everybody talks about, but nobody acts on, can only be won if we are prepared to eliminate members of the forces of law and order who are themselves deeply rooted in crime by aiding, arming and abetting these young maggots.

Having exterminated the fat-cats of crime, the scriptures tell us there is a time for peace, and there is a time for war; there is a time for killing. Now is that time.