Does our ex­pe­ri­ence of vi­o­lent crime con­sti­tute a pub­lic health emer­gency? De­spite the cyn­i­cal mock­ery in some quar­ters, it cer­tain­ly does. It meets all the glob­al­ly ac­cept­ed cri­te­ria re­lat­ed to caus­es, ef­fects, and pos­si­ble re­spons­es.

How­ev­er, since a Cari­com res­o­lu­tion al­most two years ago to em­ploy such an ap­proach, there ap­pears to have been lit­tle ef­fort any­where to build ap­pro­pri­ate lev­els of both pub­lic and of­fi­cial aware­ness to gen­er­ate the re­quired broad sup­port.

In essence, such an ap­proach recog­nis­es the im­pact of vi­o­lent crime on high mor­tal­i­ty and in­jury rates, neg­a­tive psy­cho-so­cial man­i­fes­ta­tions, and ad­verse im­pli­ca­tions for the de­liv­ery of pub­lic health­care.

There is a lot more to it than these prin­ci­pal el­e­ments, but I want us to spend some time con­sid­er­ing the ad­di­tion­al, and not en­tire­ly un­re­lat­ed, cri­sis un­fold­ing on our pub­lic road­ways.

In many re­spects, ac­knowl­edge­ment of these two plagues–vi­o­lent crime and road traf­fic may­hem–as crit­i­cal chal­lenges to na­tion­al health, safe­ty, and se­cu­ri­ty is an im­por­tant first step in recog­nis­ing our joint re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for ad­dress­ing them.

Among the last things peo­ple here want to be pun­ished with are PR-nu­anced sta­tis­tics about re­duc­tions in the num­ber of homi­cides and road traf­fic deaths.

Find a way of record­ing and ac­knowl­edg­ing fear and you will bet­ter un­der­stand what I mean by this. Peo­ple are wit­ness­ing the car­nage dai­ly. I have ob­vi­ous­ly not seen to­day’s re­ports yet but turn the pages of this very news­pa­per and you will un­der­stand what I mean.

There are peo­ple de­cid­ing not to go about what is ex­pect­ed to be their nor­mal busi­ness be­cause of the fear gen­er­at­ed by the preva­lence of both forms of vi­o­lence, prop­er­ty loss, in­jury, and death.

In the process, pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion in de­fy­ing the in­stinct to sur­ren­der is di­min­ished.

In much the same way there are so many of us who know at least one per­son who has been af­fect­ed by crime in its nu­mer­ous man­i­fes­ta­tions, we can al­so point to a friend, rel­a­tive, col­league, com­mu­ni­ty mem­ber, or oth­er ac­quain­tance who has wit­nessed or been the vic­tim of a hor­ri­ble road ex­pe­ri­ence.

Don’t look at the big turnouts at sea­son­al events alone to ar­gue against these ob­ser­va­tions. They pro­vide ev­i­dence of a re­solve not to yield to per­va­sive anx­i­eties about the prospect of harm and are not out­right dis­missal of per­va­sive re­al­i­ties and risks.

This is al­so not to point fin­gers at the poor polic­ing of vi­o­lent crimes and traf­fic laws be­cause the sus­te­nance of fear is a joint en­ter­prise that goes be­yond the role of a sin­gle un­der­ly­ing fac­tor. The po­lice en­ter the pic­ture rather late in the process of de­cay.

How­ev­er, this is not to take them off the hook. Peo­ple pre­dis­posed to vi­o­lent or reck­less be­hav­iour thrive in an en­vi­ron­ment un­der which they are more like­ly than not to es­cape un­touched (if they don’t suf­fer in­jury or death in the process), as op­posed to be­ing prompt­ly in­ter­cept­ed, prop­er­ly judged, and pun­ished if re­spon­si­ble.

There is al­so the near com­plete ab­sence of pre-emp­tive polic­ing mea­sures as con­tem­plat­ed by ad­vo­cates of so-called “bro­ken win­dows” the­o­ry (with all due pro­vi­sos re­gard­ing its non-dis­crim­i­na­to­ry im­ple­men­ta­tion). For this, it is pro­posed that ear­ly symp­toms of dis­or­der in the form of os­ten­si­bly be­nign vi­o­la­tions (Lit­ter­ing? Noise pol­lu­tion? Pub­lic pee­ing?) should be sum­mar­i­ly nipped in the bud. (Yes, “nipped”.)

So, no ob­jec­tion from me re­gard­ing the prompt and wide­spread tick­et­ing of dri­vers for every­thing from un­law­ful win­dow tints to failed so­bri­ety tests. No, there aren’t “more im­por­tant things they should be spend­ing their time and en­er­gy on.” If the au­thor­i­ties can’t meet their el­e­men­tary man­dates, then what’s the sense?

Dit­to ac­tions to ad­dress breach­es of the pub­lic peace. I have been fol­low­ing the fu­tile pub­lic com­plaints of one com­mu­ni­ty re­gard­ing the loud noise gen­er­at­ed by a sin­gle bar in the area. The po­lice have a role to play out­side of the lim­it­ed ac­tions re­lat­ed to the coun­try’s Noise Pol­lu­tion Rules. Hint: see what the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act [Chap­ter 11:02] says about “pub­lic nui­sance.”

No, the amor­phous “cul­ture of noise” is a bro­ken win­dow to be re­paired and the peo­ple who rou­tine­ly break it need to be held re­spon­si­ble.

Even so, don’t get me wrong. A “so­lu­tion” to the cur­rent may­hem is thus more than ad­dress­ing a clear­ly de­fi­cient po­lice re­sponse. While “ter­ror­ism” might be an ap­pro­pri­ate metaphor and leg­isla­tive stim­u­lant it does noth­ing to ad­dress some fun­da­men­tals.

Im­puni­ty through in­ef­fec­tive polic­ing bears trag­ic fruit elu­sive even of de­clared states of pub­lic emer­gency. Nowa­days, we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing its bit­ter taste.