[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hy does stupidity rain so incessantly on this rock of sages? Why are we so quick to rush to judgment—and just as quickly move on to the next episode of As the Stomach Churns? Not so long ago the police acknowledged they had on their files close to 500 unresolved homicides. At the time of their occurrence, normally placid human hearts, the majority female, had screamed to high heaven for justice and unspeakable vengeance. Many publicly demanded the perpetrators be made to suffer consequences not permitted under our Constitution—like being shot at first sight by the police or placed hogtied in vats of acid. The most popular punishment was offered in graphic kweyol over the airwaves: macerate the miscreant’s testicles in a grinder.
A good number of the population saw no need for expensive trials and possible appeals, which may well explain why we’ve been comfortable all these years with a justice system in name only. Dozens of murder suspects arrested in their teens and taken to Bordelais are now well into middle age, untried and quite possibly off their rockers.
Several weeks ago, at the height of Botham-mania, a security guard was fatally shot while at work. Around the same time a woman was discovered stone-cold dead at the government printery. For two days at least, suitably outraged sections of the citizenry let their anonymous voices be heard on Newsspin, then returned to business as usual. It turned out that the 58-year-old woman had died of natural causes. As for the security guard, there have been no arrests, no vigils featuring customized t-shirts, no familiar speeches. In all events the man apparently has been forgotten, ditto his children and their mother—in much the same way as have those earlier mentioned.
Never mind the routine cacophony that immediately followed her death announcement and the now de rigueur vigil near her workplace that attracted even her Haley’s Comet boss the education minister, chances are the fatal shooting of Kimberly De Leon will be buried with the earlier mentioned police list of 500 ice-cold cases—unless our general attitude to crime undergoes an abrupt sea change.
Last Saturday, I published in this newspaper a statement delivered two days earlier at the start of my weekly DBS-TV show, TALK. I took the precaution of underscoring the obvious: that nothing in my statement was meant to imply innocence or guilt. Rather, I had taken the time to explore most of what had been said about the shooting by the police and the local media and further disseminated by the anything goes social media to its unquestioning insatiable flock. I provided evidence supportive of what I said, much of it in conflict with the earlier versions, official and otherwise.
To date there have been no challenges to what I wrote or spoke. I had taken the opportunity to suggest DPP personnel advise the police in advance of press meetings, especially when related to incidents involving one of their own, as in the case of Kimberly De Leon whose husband is a police officer. And no ordinary police officer at that. I hope I did not speak to deaf ears.
Considering the countless tentacles of the particular octopus under discussion, I also advised that the De Leon investigation not be conducted solely by the local police officers, for their own sake. The credibility, perhaps through no fault of their own, has never been lower. The reaction to my published statement was no surprise. Some concluded that I was siding with the declared person of interest, Sergeant De Leon; that I had handed him the perfect alibi. Others implied I had been misled—or bought. Oh, and there were those who insisted that Kimberly was the victim of a paid assassin. There has been no further word from the police and no indication whatsoever as to their next move. Conceivably, they will have more to say when a suspect has been apprehended and charged.
Meanwhile calls for the government to import personnel to investigate the October 29 homicide are at best premature. That the police have declared Kimberly’s husband “a person of interest” suggests only that at this time they have no evidence supportive of their suspicions. Conceivably he would not still be residing at the home he shared until recently with Kimberly and their two young offspring, to say the least.
