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Dear Editor

I think it's important to determine whether or not crimes are really driven by economic woes.

Who are the people doing these thefts from cars, burglary and robberies? I think it's primarily the drug addicts desperate for a fix, even though they themselves are drug dealers. These are the kind of people that would risk burglaring properties, robbing people to get fast cash to buy drugs.

Economic gap

I live in the back of town and have experienced these sort of things first hand with my property. I have drug addicts walk past my house every day and have to secure my property as a result. People experiencing fallout from the economic gap involve themselves in selling drugs and/or stealing from employers. It really boils down to more people becoming dependant on drugs and more drugs coming into the island and less to do with economic woes.

What fuels the drive of these crimes is that we are just used to a particular lifestyle and can't seem to cut down on that lifestyle. The U.S.A. goes into recession and people cut back. Other countries don't have it so good like Bermuda even though Bermuda is expensive. In Jamaica, as an example, people are poor and don't get bent out of shape even though school children go hungry all day and don't receive as much medical care as they should. They live day to day thinking of honest ways to survive. Well, of course, a lot of Jamaican youth are into crime. But they are desperate.

As a whole, poor Bermudians are not really desperate. We can be poor and still take plane trips, go out on weekends, get fancy clothes to impress peer pressure, etc. We still have options of going to charities and government for help. Our children don't starve. The jobs are there. But we say "we can't survive on the low paying jobs so we turn to selling drugs, etc."

But how come foreigners can come here and work for cheap and survive? Except for those single mothers for example who are struggling all by themselves, who can't work for part time wages while struggling to pay for babysitting and nursery fees, for example, we, as Bermudians, have too much pride. This pride thing has lasted too long.

Lastly, it's a sign of the times we live in. Back in the day, didn't we have less luxuries as Bermudians and were still content? It was immoral to turn to crime as an excuse that we were poor. Becoming criminally minded and dishonest was not an option used to better oneself. So what happened here?

Stop at nothing

These are evil days where people stop at nothing to get what they want all over the world, including Bermuda, even if it means polluting the environment, grazing the landscape, paying cheap wages, encouraging slavery, murder, vice, crimes against children and adolescents, etc.

As the saying is revealed, unless you receive the Mark of the Beast in the forehead or the hand, you can not buy or sell during the time when the Mark of the Beast system is enforced. We have to make a stand to rather go hungry instead of giving in to evil.

Philip Simmons

Pembroke[[In-content Ad]]

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