Melville Cooke
The police
Always come late
If they come at all
- Tracy Chapman
I REST MY head in a solidly middle class neighbourhood, one of the few through which a bus route runs and in which persons can be seen walking without a care in the world up to 11:00 p.m. and as early as 4:30 a.m., when the exercisers get going.
Like any such neighbourhood, it has its incidents, mostly petty theft, with an occasional spike (as the one-day run-rate cricket analysts call it) into something more serious.
However, over the past few weeks, theft of fruit has stepped up to a worrying rash of armed hold-ups and break-ins and the theft of an expensive hedge-trimmer at about 7:30 p.m. does not qualify as petty crime.
NO POLICE
Like many people who feel safe in their homes, without a panic button at hand and a security company sign on the gate, I hardly think of the police until I drive out on the streets and actually see them on patrol.
However, when a neighbour pointed out that the police are hardly around in the community, I started to look for them. And saw none.
They are very much present at a commercial and commuting hub near the main entrances to the community, seeming to do mostly traffic control duties. In the mornings they are very much around at an intersection which carries a high volume of traffic, scanning licence discs as cars pass and occasionally pulling over someone for an early morning check.
One night, three weeks ago, I did see a flashing blue light on a road in the community. It turned out to be two young policemen checking a motorist's papers, one with an automatic rifle.
Forgive me for being a skeptic, but from personal experience as well as stories told to me by others, when I see two policemen pulling over a car in a residential neighbourhood I do not see policing, but private enterprise where the tax collector need not get involved.
Seeing the same policemen checking a driver's papers on the bus stand a few minutes later did nothing to make me feel that they were about the government's business. Of course, I am sure that the police do pass through the neighbourhood and I am aware that there are not sufficient police personnel (or cars) to patrol everywhere.
MARKED ABSENCE
But, prompted by the gentleman's concerns, I rifled through my memories of many nights coming in late and could not recall a single police car. That is not good. Granted, these peaceful communities must be low on the list of things to do for an overworked police force that has a daily menu of murder and mayhem to mull over.
This marked absence, however, smacks of near abandonment. But is this not the fate of the middle class, too poor to afford their own legal gunmen who ride around on bikes and in tinted cars, yet not roots enough to have their own stash of arms and willing and able shottas?
The much vaunted community policing seems to stop at the entrances to the neighbourhood I rest my head in and I have
spoken to sufficient persons in similar circumstances to know that it is not an unusual situation. Standing by the roadside and perusing licence discs does not qualify as community policing.
There is another factor that must be taken into consideration. Many supposedly solid middle-class neighbourhods are being dotted with residents of, shall we say, no visible means of support, who seem to have a lot of spare time on their hands.
SOCIOLOGICAL SHIFT
It is an inevitable sociological shift in a country where the salary of a person who has gone through the education system and got a job is a mere shadow to the profits from go-fast boats.
As more and more of those who make money by these methods move into middle-class neighbourhoods, it is inevitable that there will be at least minor scuffles and possibly major outbreaks of violence.
It would make sense for the police to get a sense of the composition of these communities, something that can only be done by knowing the people. And that can be done only by actually going there, walking through and saying hi. Nothing more. But I do not even see a car.
Melville Cooke is a freelance journalist.
