Proactive approach to crime must be adopted
Reverend Dr. Lucille Baird while delivering her sermon yesterday.
By:
Janelle Husbands
AGREEING with the assertion that many blocks in Barbados are hotbeds of crime, Reverend Dr. Lucille Baird believes groups congregating in these areas should be disbanded.
The outspoken cleric made the suggestion yesterday during a service hosted by Mt. Zion’s Missions in collaboration with the Criminal Justice Research and Planning Unit under the theme The Criminal Justice System of Barbados 50 Years and Beyond.
According to Dr. Baird, “We have to wash these blocks. We can’t be reactive, we have to proactive. If two people are sitting together, break it up … if three people are together, break it up. Before it becomes a big colossal giant that we can’t kill. It becomes a place of growing crime and criminal behaviour.
“We are importing most of our food and they are on the blocks sitting down all day long? They can work! Plant potatoes, cassava, yam and eddoes. And not the other thing,” she said.
Dr. Baird, who said she has worked in HMP Prisons for 25 years lamented that even though the National Anthem speaks of the Lord being the people’s guide, many young persons do not know God. “They don’t know the Ten Commandments, they don’t know the Lord’s Prayer, Psalm 23, and they don’t know what the Bible looks like,” she lamented.
Reverend Baird also held the Church accountable for not going out to reach these young persons, suggesting that the Church must meet persons in need where they are.
“Some are watering down the gospel for membership … Promiscuity and immorality are rampant. As a church we must repent for not speaking up against the ills of society. We’re keeping quiet when we should be speaking.
“The Church must know its role. The Church must pray earnestly because prayer works. Preach earnestly that Jesus is still Lord and saviour of Barbados and preserve the Christian and traditional values of the nation.”
Dr. Baird also spoke of the emergence of the “ bashment culture” saying that it must be rejected as being a part of Barbadian culture, adding that it creates a window for other societal ills to emerge.
“That is not our culture…We are ministers of God. Spirits are real. When we endorse the spirit, along with that spirit comes other spirits. When we give authority and credibility and acceptability to the spirit of bashment, along with it comes crime, and violence and promiscuity….
“Why is there so much crime in Barbados? Because we endorse the bashment and wukup spirit and open the door to the other spirits. We have to close the door on bashment and wukup and say not with our country, not with our youth, and take back our country, our streets and our communities,” she said. (JH)
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