CRIMINAL SCAVENGERS took cruel advantage of flood victims over the weekend in one of the uglier sidelights of the recent spell of bad weather.
In gentler times it used to be that crime took a holiday when natural disasters traumatised people in distress. Not so anymore; not with the unrelenting wave of gun crime and murder which afflicts this nation.
As we reported in Monday's edition many motorists stalled on flooded streets in Kingston were robbed by marauders in the rain. Heavily armed members of the security forces had to be posted Sunday afternoon in the Two-Mile area of Spanish Town Road when motorists reported several robberies. Still others had to pay exorbitant tolls to be rescued from the flood waters.
Several business places were looted. A Gleaner news team saw men, women, and children running with packages looted from a business place in the Weymouth Drive area.
The bad weather did not dampen the spiralling murder rate either. A triple killing, suspected to have been from internal gang conflict, took place in the wee hours of Sunday night-Monday morning in the Bayshore Park area in east St. Andrew.
This dark side of the flood disaster is an index of the times. There have been occasional instances when people, normally law-abiding, have seized the chance to grab goods spilled from laden trucks involved in road accidents; or even loot business places damaged by fire.
But it seems to us that the scale of this aberration during a period of anxiety and distress is an alarming development. Scavengers are drawn to rot and decay. This nation needs much healing.
The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner.
