Police are concerned about the public disrespect mounted against officers in the execution of their duties.
Acting Commissioner of Police Erwin Boyce, responding to comments about circulated videos showing members of the public obstructing the police, said such disrespect was also being manifested by the youth as he agreed that this anti-police sentiment was growing.
“Every engagement, every interaction can be considered a dangerous interaction because it reflects the level of control of behaviours. So there’s a level of disrespect. What is worrying from a police perspective is that the disrespect is starting from a relatively young age, teenagers, juveniles.
“It suggests to us that there’s something missing: one, in the home, and secondly, in the community and in the wider discussion on behaviours. I think one of the things that we recognise is that there will be that level of anti-police sentiment, there will be a level of disrespect. I think the forefathers or the fathers of the ’80s and the ’90s saw that as creeping into the younger generation, the younger population. And hence, we adopted models that responded to youth deviance, delinquency, the school, the atmosphere, the school environment,” he added.
Boyce was speaking during a recent panel discussion on Zoom on the evolution of crime in Barbados from the 1980s to the present day.
Other panellists were Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Alliston Seale SC, Senior Counsel Angella Mitchell-Gittens, retired media manager David Ellis and former police officer Wade Gibbons. Criminologist Kim Ramsay was the moderator.
Seale said he saw bad behaviour traits among some children going unchecked from at school.
“Now, they’re the adults or the young adults and nobody’s seeing the connection, and unless I am making an inappropriate connection, that is my view . . . .
“We only look at the big things when things get out of hand. We don’t deal with them in the embryonic stages when we can really handle them. I have seen that people need to train the children . . . . Parents themselves also encourage the foolishness because if you cannot tell a child what to do, how can a teacher control the child?”
He added: “Only recently I heard someone on the radio say that their child who was recently shot, he wasn’t any trouble; he was more of a Robin Hood.
That means he robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. Now you’re glamorising criminal activity; I don’t care what he did. Some of these parents who speak, you hear them say, ‘He wasn’t a bad boy but he had his ways’ and his ways are negative ways.
How can I glamorise a Robin Hood?” Seale asked.
Ellis said some parents needed assistance in dealing with their recalcitrant children.
“So you will find that there’s a parent who for whatever reason is incapable of giving guidance to their child,” he noted.
“The child has dyslexia or it is on the autism spectrum and there is no help . . . . Some people need help and this is where the State is expected to do more for people. I accept that there are some who are going to be really bad behaved and you can’t change them, but some of them need intervention and the reality is that our society is not providing enough.”
In terms of the evolution of crime, all of the panellists called on the police to get back to basics by having a more visible presence in the communities and on the streets.
Mitchell-Gittens, a defence attorney, said crime was a social problem “and I think the shortfall has been in finding solutions. There has been little or no evolution as far as the social side of it is concerned”. She added: “I believe anger management should be taught in schools. I believe there should be a halfway or three-quarter way house from the prison to society because we know what the risk factors are. Social factors in the home. Little or no educational or skill. And when persons leave prison and they have no skill, they have no job, they have no family support, what do they do? They contact the person they were in prison with. I think there needs to be some place that you can go.” (MB)
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