COMMENTARY: Jack and Jill Looter

By Dickson Igwe, Contributor

Hurricane Irma was a monster hurricane. The storm was also a massive tornado that devastated all and sundry in its diabolical path. Irma was a tropical cyclone that registered as an earthquake on seismic measurements.

It left tragedy and devastation in its wake. The demon of a storm struck the Virgin Islands on September 6. Irma was the strongest hurricane to have visited the Caribbean in recorded history. Its impact on the Virgin Islands spelled the worst disaster to visit the Virgin Islands since the 1800s. Irma was the Virgin Islands 911.

OK. Hurricane Irma had moral dimensions. And of all the evils of Hurricane Irma, Jack the Looter was the most malevolent.

Jack was the most despicable of imbeciles. Make no mistake. The greatest evil of Hurricane Irma was the fact that men and women, Virgin Islanders, belongers, residents, and aliens, went out of their way, to inflict further damage on their suffering neighbours.

These were the ‘unmentionables’ who broke into businesses — businesses that had stood securely, after Hurricane Irma blew past and the terrible storm thankfully departed Virgin Islands shores.

After the storm, these ‘horrible’ human beings went out of their way to use every type of implement to smash windows and doors, and vulnerable entries into buildings, stealing, looting, and plundering.

The damage hurricane Irma inflicted was made worse by these ‘anarchists.’ Puerto Rico also became a looters paradise after horrific weather in September. But in many areas of Puerto Rico, there is a shoot to kill rule when looting takes place. Looters and potential looters understand the implications of looting in Puerto Rico.

Yes, if the hurricane winds were not enough to bring families to their knees, these thoughtless and callous beasts finished the evil that Irma began.

Many of these looters were easily recognizable in the ‘illegal melee.’ It is alleged that some of these thieves were bold enough to make light of their criminal behaviour. They looted openly. And when questioned by law abiding residents, they stated that their crimes were acceptable in the circumstances.

There is an acceptance of crime in the Virgin Islands that is defeatist and alarming. This is a sub culture of criminal behaviour that will eventually destroy the Virgin Islands socially. It will also negatively impact the Virgin Islands community down the road if not curtailed.

The looter, plunderer, and pillager, undermine investor, business, and consumer confidence, and this further damages a ‘traumatized economy’. Today, there are shortages in stores as a result of this looting.

Now some moons back, this resident wrote about the critical need to obtain specific and thoughtful demographics on those who live here in the Virgin Islands — their backgrounds, what they do, where they live, where they are from, and what their intentions and motives are. He advocated the introduction of a National ID Card. He stated that the reason for national identification metrics was that the Virgin Islands were a very vulnerable community.

He further asserted that everyone should be required by law to hold an ID card linked to a secure database with global positioning capabilities. That database would hold sensitive demographic and security data on all residents. Aliens would be required by law to hold ID showing their status.

If residents or aliens did not possess their IDs when requested, then they would be interrogated and investigated. Now this suggestion probably raised eyebrows among the very politically correct subset.

However, the fact is this that there is a golden opportunity after Irma to strengthen security in the Virgin Islands. There is also a further opportunity to toughen immigration and customs protocols. A three-month work permit moratorium ends shortly. At the end of the moratorium, only legal residents should be in the territory, and persons on genuine work permits.

All residents who fit into a specific criminal demographic should be closely monitored. Then there can be no inequity and favouritism in immigration protocols from henceforth.

The borders of the Virgin Islands are very porous. There are insufficient resources in manpower and technology to guard the territory effectively. Guns flow into the territory from outside the country. Illegal weapons arrive on boats, and even in containers at the ports.

And furthermore, geographically, the country is very beautiful. However, it is prone to devastating hurricanes, and it is seismically unstable. The Virgin Islands sit by a major geological fault line that makes a major earthquake inevitable. These islands are part of a volcanic chain.

Then the world has become a much more dangerous place, sadly.

This writer believes profiling is good security. One must understand the various cultural subsets that contribute to criminality in a jurisdiction.

Too much tolerance has made Europe insecure. One example: Europe’s politically correct elite have failed to understand the unique mindlessness of Islamic terror. Today’s terrorists view death as an end in itself. There is no human reasoning with members of death cults.

Today, in the UK, France, Belgium, or Spain, a bomb going off on a bus, in a crowded community event, on a train, or a truck slamming into pedestrians on a sidewalk, is deemed expected and inevitable. It has become part of the criminal culture.

When you fail to sufficiently protect your community because of politically correct sensibilities, and your refusal to call a spade a spade, then expect the worse.

Israel is a democratic country that sits in the most violent, volatile, and undemocratic region on earth and a nation state that understands the dangers of the world of 2017, only too well.