I slept poorly last night. As a matter of fact, I’ve been sleeping poorly for the past two weeks since my neighbour told me he caught two burglars in his garden. He saw them thanks to his alarm system that comes with a camera that puts the entire courtyard under surveillance. But whether you have state-of the-art alarm system or not, the end result of having trespassers on your property is the same; utter distraught and that horrid feeling of having been violated. I’m not even talking of the extent those trespassers will go to rob you, to the kind of violence they will resort to. I’m sure you can relate. But the psychosis that the robberies are creating is unacceptable; people cannot live in a constant state of fear. So I’ve set my own kind of alarm system – my three fiercely protective dogs. That’s why I guess I sleep poorly; my furry guardian angels bark not only at burglars but at every creature that roams the gardens!

An article by Fadya Nazirkhan-Mahmoud published in Wednesday’s “l’express” reveals that the police are overwhelmed by the sheer number of robberies and larcenies perpetrated these past months. Understandably this report did not sit comfortably with some people at the Line Barracks. But being on the defensive isn’t going to help. Whether we like it or not, we are facing hard times in terms of the general decadence in our society. While we agree on the lapses in every sphere of life, we don’t quite know what to attribute them to. Be that as it may, the inescapable fact is that we must face it.

It’s not the police role’s to guard our homes. After a decade or so of increasingly selfi sh behaviour where neighbours kept to themselves and their increasingly individualistic lifestyles, people are now realizing that they will only defeat this new evil by sticking together and acting – again – like a community. That’s why the police’s rejoinder published in today’s “l’express” is superfluous. The police are bound to be overwhelmed by such a state of affairs and it’s their job to make people realize that they’ve also their part to play if they want a safe society. In the meantime, perhaps the police need the same prescription Dev Manraj gave the University of Mauritius; “a much more intelligent way of working”. Rama Valayden seems to have a few constructive suggestions.

For, what are the police to do when football players start beating up a referee because the latter gave one of the players a yellow card? This happened last week in Rivière du Rempart. What are the authorities to do when a man, cheesed off because another driver didn’t give him way at a petrol station, gathers a gang of hoodlums to go and destroy the driver’s house? Kali Yuga, my father calls it; he might just be onto something.