What’s behind some of our young people’s seeming obsession with not only guns but the carnage that these pieces of machinery leave in their path?
Where are the guns coming from?
What are the triggers that lead to someone getting a gun and pulling its trigger to snuff out a life?
Who are the players and is this all a game to them?
Why is this happening?
When are we really going to get serious about this?
How can we take over the controls to announce ‘Game Over!’?
These are my five “Ws” and one “H” with respect to our gun issue. I would like to know what yours are.
Eleventh and twelfth murders two days apart and two shot on Monday
Last night, the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis received word of the 12th murder for the year. The 11th one occurred just on Sunday. On Monday, we also heard that two young men – one 25 and the other 19 – were shot in Parsons and Cayon, respectively.
As customary with these kinds of stories, the comments came in to SKNVibes fast. People were furious.
Someone wrote: “too much lil boys running around with guns and thinking dem is big man, Boy you all aint know guns dont make you a man.”
Another wrote: “What is this everyone in St Kitts have a gun what is the country coming to.”
It’s time for us to launch a serious anti-gun campaign
It is time for us to launch a serious anti-gun campaign and take it to the schools. After all, the thug-life gang culture has infiltrated the schools already.
On Tuesday, March 31, I sat in on Veronica Phillipson’s singing class with five boys at a public high school. While listening to Mr. Sandman, I looked around the classroom. “Bring me a dream,” the boys sang, but what I saw scribbled on the walls was a veritable nightmare. There were written homages to gangs. One scrawl said Teklife + Upt. Another just said crip.
The singing class took place in one of the “mainstream” fifth form classrooms; 5g4 to be exact [forms with extensions between g1 and g4 are considered to be in the mainstream].
Even more amazing is that these ominous references were still on the walls when I went to the school again yesterday, Tuesday, May 19.
Before going back to the school, I phoned two of my sources who have some knowledge of local gang culture. I asked: “What’s Upt?” Surprisingly, neither of them knew. One of them said they would get back to me on that.
Googling “Upt gang” without the quotation marks five minutes later, I found the reference in a document titled Gang List for NC Governor’s Crime Commission.
UPT means Uptown Gang. I phoned my sources to let them know.
Neither of us said it, but I knew we all felt one step behind.
Gang graffiti in schools: Is there a difference between “higher” and “lower” classes?
A little after midday yesterday, I returned to the high school and found more gang graffiti in the classroom. Graffiti was also in the classroom beside it. References to gangs even covered the plastic chairs.
A female in 5g2 stopped to speak with me. “There are lots of graffiti around the school generally, but I do think the school has tried its best to cover it. I remember last year when I was in fourth form the whole back portion was covered with graffiti. We had to paint over our class actually,” she said.
The student added, “Suppose that Tom is in a gang. He’s going to put ‘Tom KMS for Life,’ whatever. You wouldn’t see that [graffiti] now because every time something goes up the school covers it up.”
I pointed to the two classes and asked, “Have you been inside those classes? Could I show you?”
She looked inside the two classes.
“Do you see what I’m talking about?”
“Yes, I do,” she said. Then, she made this assertion. “I think it’s mostly in the lower classes. Really, most people in the lower classes are generally involved in gangs. I’m not saying that people in the higher classes are not, but most of them in the lower classes are.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I see it,” she said.
“What exactly do you see to suggest that?”
“Well, suppose that they are taking a picture, you would see all their hands with whatever gang related signs. But in 4g1, you would probably see them throw up a peace sign or whatever. I never really see gang related signs in higher classes,” she said.
“Is there any graffiti on your classroom wall now?”
“There might be a few [graffiti], but not like how that class [one that she saw] would have it. But still that class is relatively clean to me compared to what was the case last year.”
Although the student says the graffiti situation at the school has gotten better, one way that this school and the entire education system could ensure uniformity among “lower” and “higher” classes would be to implement a zero tolerance graffiti policy.
Osmond Petty, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education, said yesterday that the school system does not have a written graffiti policy. “There is nothing written down on these things,” he said.
Googling “graffiti policy high school” without quotation marks, I found the website for the Oakland Technical High School in Oakland, California. (In the summer of 2007, a spike in gang related murders saw Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger commit additional California Highway Patrol Officers to patrol in Oakland upon the request of Mayor Ron Dellums.)
The high school website reads in part: “Graffiti vandalism is an eyesore, is symptomatic of urban decay and gang activity. It generates a perception of neighborhood crime and it sends the message that the community is not concerned about the appearance of their neighborhood. We all constitute the Tech Community. It is up to us to maintain a clean and safe environment. We are investing a substantial amount on the school modernization program and this is a call for all of us to step up and solve the vandalism problem. Our principal has a zero tolerance policy for graffiti and we need to fully support her. Another very effective way for us to eliminate graffiti is to have it painted over immediately. The perpetrators will see the futility of their actions and eventually stop.”
How soon can we come up with such a campaign?
What we also do not have in St. Kitts and Nevis is an anti-gun campaign that utilizes all types of media, such as TV and radio PSAs (public service announcements), light pole banners, etc., much in the way that the local HIV-AIDS awareness campaign does.
Take Scotland Yard’s anti-gun campaign titled “Blood On Your Hands”. An advertisement that ran on TV and the Internet showed teenagers leaving handprints of blood on everything they touched while the voice-over said “If you know someone has got a gun but don’t report it, you could have blood on your hands.”
Launched in 2005, the hard-hitting advertisement was re-released in 2007, partly in response to the gang related murders of three teenagers in south London within a week and a half span in February. The third murder occurred on Valentine’s Day 2007. The youth-focused ad ran for three weeks during the Easter holidays.
What if an ad like that one played on ZIZ during the Evening News or taped soap operas, which are popular with a lot of women: a small portion of whom might be aiding and abetting their gang affiliated children by remaining silent in the presence of guns at their home?
“All these guys are still subsidized by their mothers,” said Dr. Garfield Alexander when I interviewed him back in March. “They might be gone for three or four days and when they get back in the house their mothers might make a little bit of noise, but at the end of it there’s still food for them on the table.”
So why not bring the anti-gun message to the dinner table, the living room and the bedroom where a good number of these women probably watch our national TV station from, possibly in close vicinity to a gun?
Coupled with other advertisements on the radio, Internet and billboards, the TV spot won’t be a cure-all, but it certainly would be more effective than the anti-gun messages that news consumers post, e-mail and phone in to local media organizations. In most cases, these avid news consumers get their two minutes to vent in public then it’s on to the next topic of discussion.
We need an organized, serious anti-gun campaign as soon as possible.
Plus, it seems like every time the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis embarks on a political-oriented process, such as reconfirmation, the St. Kitts and Nevis Information Service (SKNIS) produces a PSA to encourage the public to participate. So isn’t it about time that National Security collaborates with SKNIS on an anti-gun PSA?
Speaking with Police Press and Public Relations Officer Inspector Cromwell Henry yesterday, I learnt that, “There are no immediate plans for that type of approach in terms of putting up banners and airing ads.”
Inspector Henry added that, “We deal with it from a law enforcement perspective. There is a special unit that focuses on guns and gun related crimes. We also have an anti-gang unit with an intelligence arm. So the focus is on intelligence-led policing.”
Near the end of our conversation, Inspector Cromwell Henry said something promising. “I think that is something that is doable and it’s worth the while doing it,” he said.
“I will put that forward to my seniors and see how soon we can come up with such a campaign,” he added.
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