The Local Crime, A Different Response

July 26, 2010 by Taran Rampersad

While most of you might have seen it on the news yesterday, the bandit shot dead happened not too far from where I'm staying and where I grew up. The gunshots around 3 a.m. off of Moody Stewart Street and later in the area of South Street were noticed by every household in the area, two men were seen getting out of an SUV on Moody Stewart Street during the incident - these ended up being the police (witnesses wisely stayed away from the windows afterward).

The next morning, one neighbor told me that Dave had been robbed - Dave Seon, a man who used to pitch marbles with an Uncle. The owner of Seon's Beer Garden on Royal Road, a place that I have been known to haunt every now and then. Dave, who used to deliver newspapers to my father back in the 1980s. Dave. Dave? 

Dave.

So I headed up to the Beer Garden and spoke with Dave and Penelope even as the neighborhood seemed to rally to support the bar. And they're all well. The police were applauded - something new in the area that I grew up in. And the bandit shot dead? A quote from patrons:

"Good. One less."

In a time when capital punishment has been debated so vigorously, on the street the people are so tired of crime that it doesn't seem like an armchair discussion.

And for what it's worth, TTPS should take a bow for their rapid response on this - and emulate it more often.

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