“The po­lice are trained to shoot, and they will shoot to kill if you threat­en their lives and when you arm your­selves with a weapon like a gun.” The warn­ing comes from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in the wake of nine peo­ple hav­ing lost gun bat­tles with po­lice of­fi­cers de­fend­ing them­selves re­cent­ly. 

The is­sue is whether or not the youth, those who have de­ter­mined that en­gag­ing in crim­i­nal be­hav­iours is an op­tion they want to pur­sue for the im­me­di­ate and the fu­ture, ap­pre­ci­ate the fact that the po­lice of­fi­cers will not hes­i­tate to use their law­ful­ly ac­quired weapons, which they are trained to han­dle, to de­fend them­selves.

It’s been two decades of young and in­deed ma­ture crim­i­nals tack­ling po­lice of­fi­cers, in­di­vid­u­al­ly and in groups, as in the in­stance of the six who came up against po­lice of­fi­cers last week and lost their lives in mak­ing such a choice. The fact is, there has been no learn­ing by large num­bers of young peo­ple from the in­stances of hun­dreds of ban­dits of all ages who have lost the bat­tles they have cho­sen to en­gage with po­lice of­fi­cers do­ing their law­ful du­ty to pro­tect in­no­cent cit­i­zens.

In the words of “old peo­ple," se­nior cit­i­zens who have seen the end of such bat­tles not favour­ing the young, mid­dle-aged, and even se­niors, “like they break stick in their ears.” The folk lan­guage warns that trained po­lice of­fi­cers will not hes­i­tate to de­fend them­selves when threat­ened.

In ad­di­tion to the fact that po­lice of­fi­cers have every right to “pro­tect and serve” cit­i­zens be­sieged by crim­i­nals en­gaged in un­law­ful be­hav­iours, the na­tion and its peo­ple may not feel sym­pa­thy for crim­i­nals who come up against po­lice of­fi­cers do­ing their du­ty. Such re­ac­tion by law­ful cit­i­zens may very well be “if not the crim­i­nals, then it may very well have been them los­ing their lives.”

The re­cent shoot­ing deaths of the six peo­ple who took their lives in their hands by com­ing up against armed of­fi­cers “re­veal a deeply trou­bling trend where young per­sons un­der the age of 25 are the pri­ma­ry sub­jects in many of our in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties,” ob­served Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

It is a case of the CoP un­der­lin­ing the ad­vice giv­en by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Row­ley to all those, es­pe­cial­ly young peo­ple, not to be­lieve they can be suc­cess­ful against po­lice of­fi­cers trained and giv­en the law­ful right to shoot. 

The fact is that the youth and all those who em­bark on a life of crime and do so with weapons, usu­al­ly il­le­gal­ly held, have not learnt the lessons of those who went be­fore. Or in­deed, those who are of the mis­tak­en be­lief that they can come out ahead of armed po­lice of­fi­cers. 

Com­mis­sion­er Hare­wood-Christo­pher, like many be­fore, once again sought to urge par­ents to play the “pri­ma­ry role” of nur­tur­ing and guid­ing young peo­ple away from en­gag­ing in the haz­ardous path of crime. 

Al­though the pro­vi­sion of op­por­tu­ni­ties by the Gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate sec­tor for young peo­ple to adopt pos­i­tive lifestyles has not been per­fect, it can­not be said there are no op­tions for youths to be trained, and this is so even for those who have not had per­fect aca­d­e­m­ic ca­reers.