THE EDITOR, Madam:
AS SOMEONE who has called Waterhouse home for as long as memory serves me, I watch somewhat amused as the different labels are bandied about: ghetto, depressed area, inner-city community, garrison community etc.
Stereotypes (especially false ones) die reluctantly and the persistently popular mainstream perspective questions the possibility of good coming from within the ghetto.
I was saddened to hear about the brutal slaying December 14 of a promising young man from the community under the all too familiar allegations of a shoot-out. Whenever we marginalise individuals according to labels they wear: "street people", "mad people", "downtown people" or "ghetto people", this acts as social disqualifiers.
And evidently this social disenfranchisement legitimises injustice. For surely, as Orwellian logic goes, some people are more equal than others.
I have just read that the Ministry of Security and Justice has, over the last 13 months, spent $0.2 billion on equipping the security forces with an assortment of vehicles. One, of course, cannot gainsay such expenditures. If, however, security personnel strain community relations with the weight of extra-judicial killings and 'security by intimidation' then neither high technology nor low will be able to effect their civic mandate.
I am, etc.,
RYAN PALMER
71 Penwood Road
Kingston 11
