*shakes my head*

My family in Trinidad lives obliqulely across the road from a bar. Nothing wrong with that in theory; with the copious amounts of bars there are in T&T anyway, no one really lives too far away from one.

This particular bar has always been problematic to us for several reasons. The  bar has one main entrance/ exit which faces our main door to the house. When music is blaring in the bar, the speaker-box effect causes our little board-house to rock like a 7.0 on the Richter. I guess we should bear it a little and consider ourselves just a little unfortunate; after all, that is someone`s livelihood right? But should we be sympathetic to music rocking a residential neighborhood at 2am? On a weekday?

Added to this perpetual noise pollution is the gathering of rather unsavoury folk in close vicinity of our home. Don't get me wrong, I am not judging bar-goers per se. I myself would be a rauring hypocrite if I were to do that. But frequent fights a stone's throw from our living room, the heckling of my mother and sister from greasy old inebriated douches, and men urinating on our gate can together paint a rather unpleasnt picture of the regulars of this bar.

My parents have contacted the police several times. You know, the police; those folks who are paid to maintain justice and order in our daily lives; the peeps in whom we are expected to trust our safety. They have apparently "talked to" the bar owners many times over the years, but there has been no change. I don't know if these talks happen on the days that said officers are having drinks at the bar, which is at least a couple times a week, but you would think that something would have been done by now. Wait; why would I possibly think that?

Most recently (last night), the bar owner, clearly drunk as a fish (as our cousin-ly inside joke would go, he had definitely met Uncle), slammed his pick-up truck directly into our front gate before speeding away like he was fleeing the scene of a hit and run (it WAS a hit and run come to think of it).

My dad goes to the police station to report this. The officers take his report, then tells my dad "We'll go have a talk with him in the morning". My dad, easily annoyed, tells the officer that the owner had been drinking (my dad had been observing from our porch all day) and that the officers should peg him for drunk driving. The police decline, saying that they will wait until he is sober tomorrow to speak to him. My dad, now furious, tries to, as calmly as he can, find out why it would make more sense to put this off than to deal with it now (the bar owner had since returned home, completely ignoring our bent up gate or his rear-ended van). The officer asks my dad, "is anyone hurt?". "What does that matter, the man committed a criminal offense, is drunk as ass, and is sitting under his house just WAITING to be arrested, why don't you deal with this now?!?" dad retorts. It is now about 8pm, which wouldnt be too late to arrest someone I would imagine. Police-woman to my irate father: "Are YOU trying to tell ME the law, or what to do?" My father. now dejected and resigned to this not-uncommon police response, turns and leaves.

Why am I sharing all this with you? Because Trinidadians always wonder how our country got from being a virtual utopia to being the Caribbean's crime hot-spot. All this pish-tosh with States of Emergency and curfews and crime clean-up programs and everything else will puirely be moot if the law enforcers cant do their jobs. You might think incidents like this are petty. but large trees sprout from minute seeds. Ask yourself this question: what if someone had been s standing at our gate ??