Geisha Kow­lessar

Dis­gust­ed by the dai­ly blood­shed and law­less­ness sweep­ing the coun­try, Ro­man Catholic priest Fa­ther Ian Tay­lor is call­ing for the death penal­ty to be swift­ly re­in­stat­ed.

In de­liv­er­ing the ser­mon dur­ing Mass on Sat­ur­day night at the St Charles RC Church in Tu­na­puna, Tay­lor said the coun­try may nev­er come to terms with last week's killing of bank em­ploy­ee Shan­non Ban­field.

Say­ing that the "coun­try was in a state," Tay­lor de­mand­ed that Ban­field's killers from "top to bot­tom" face the hang­man with­in the soon­est pos­si­ble time, as he prayed for jus­tice to be de­liv­ered to the young woman's fam­i­ly.

"Don't think that crim­i­nals are sor­ry. These men have be­come hard­ened crim­i­nals. We should feel sor­ry for the vic­tims and you should be sor­ry for the vic­tims' fam­i­lies," he told the con­gre­ga­tion.

"If you take some­one's life then you will pay the penal­ty of your life."

He ex­plained that this was the right of the State, which the Ro­man Catholic Church had pre­vi­ous­ly asked the State not to car­ry out in a show of mer­cy to crim­i­nals. How­ev­er, said while he him­self would like to see the death penal­ty re­in­stat­ed due to the cur­rent lev­el of law­less­ness, the Church can­not de­mand that the State hang crim­i­nals.

"If the State needs the death penal­ty to pro­tect its cit­i­zen­ry then let it (State) do so and let it ex­er­cise it know­ing that God has giv­en the State the right to take life if you mur­der," Tay­lor said.

"We need to pray that the laws in this coun­try are im­ple­ment­ed and let it be done so that crim­i­nals will take heed. The coun­try has gone law­less and peo­ple need to be pun­ished for break­ing the laws and that in­cludes peo­ple in high places be­cause they are the re­al crim­i­nals. Cor­rupt men must be brought to jus­tice."

Ban­field, 20 of Mc Carthy Street, Can­taro Vil­lage, San­ta Cruz, was last seen leav­ing her work place–RBL's In­de­pen­dence Square branch–around 4 pm last Mon­day. She had told her moth­er, Sher­ry-Ann Lopez, via phone she was leav­ing work to pur­chase items at IAM and com­pa­ny.

Her de­com­pos­ing body was found last Thurs­day in a store­room of the third floor of the build­ing lo­cat­ed at Char­lotte Street, Port-of-Spain.

Tay­lor said crim­i­nals had be­come so brazen that they were un­afraid of the po­lice and of be­ing locked up, adding that jail had be­come "a nice thing where there were cell­phones and even a flat screen TV."

The priest al­so lam­bast­ed the Po­lice Ser­vice for its poor re­sponse when his own church was re­cent­ly robbed. He said he had giv­en the po­lice footage from CCTV cam­eras show­ing a man pre­tend­ing to be a mem­ber of the con­gre­ga­tion be­fore steal­ing the of­fer­ing and calm­ly walk­ing out of the church.

"Af­ter I put every­thing on a flash dri­ve and give it to the po­lice, the po­lice­man turn and ask me, 'Well fa­ther, what you want to do?' Imag­ine that. I should have told him show me where the man is so I could run af­ter him my­self," Tay­lor said.

He called for prayers to be of­fered up to the Po­lice Ser­vice, which he said des­per­ate­ly need­ed to weed out its rogue cops.

On the case where a mur­der ac­cused was al­lowed to con­duct busi­ness at a bank un­su­per­vised by po­lice, Tay­lor said, "That is how we op­er­at­ing now. Some­body smok­ing some­thing."

He called on the con­gre­ga­tion and the wider com­mu­ni­ty to join forces to com­bat the crime scourge, first­ly by tak­ing com­mu­ni­ties back from crim­i­nal el­e­ments. He said dis­cus­sions were be­ing held to have ac­tiv­i­ties with­in the parish so that peace could be re­stored.

Tay­lor's ser­mon was not the on­ly case in which cit­i­zens showed their dis­gust over Ban­field and oth­er peo­ple's mur­ders over the week­end. There were two pub­lic events in mem­o­ry of Ban­field yes­ter­day in Port-of-Spain, while the fam­i­lies of those mur­dered over the week­end al­so spoke open­ly about the crime scourge and the po­lice and Gov­ern­ment's in­abil­i­ty to get a han­dle on it.

Asked af­ter the Mass whether the death penal­ty would be a de­ter­rent, Tay­lor said no one, not even crim­i­nals, want­ed to die, adding, how­ev­er, that the death penal­ty must be ex­er­cised fre­quent­ly. He said per­son­al­ly he did not hold the po­si­tion that the death penal­ty should be abol­ished.

"Sec­ond­ly, it must be a form of ret­ri­bu­tion. There must be a form of pun­ish­ment to suit the crime. When you com­mit mur­der the penal­ty is your life and that is what the scrip­ture says," he said.

"And the State al­so has the du­ty to pro­tect its cit­i­zens, be­cause when a per­son's life is gone they can­not re­peat crimes but when a per­son gets 15 years and they come out they can re­peat what has hap­pened."

On whether he was wor­ried there may back­lash re­gard­ing his state­ments, Tay­lor said, "I think for my­self."