Community fear

Police Frustration

City residents could hear the frustration in a police-man's voice last week when Detective Bill Clark lamented the lack of co-operation he was getting from witnesses to the New Year's shooting of two men in a north downtown lounge. One young Somali man was dead and a second in serious condition and witnesses, including the surviving victim, were refusing to help police in their investigation.

But there's a reason witnesses aren't talking. They are fearful of the killers and they are suspicious of police, having come from a land where lawlessness reigns supreme. The detective was lashing back at community members who were accusing police for their lack of success in solving the slayings of nine Somalis in the city since 2008. It's not just an Edmonton problem. In Alberta, according to the head of the Alberta Somali community centre, there have been 32 Somali murders in the past five years. Although police say both 23-year-old Mohamed Mahamoud Jama and the 26-year-old who was wounded were "known" to them -- alleging they had a criminal lifestyle -- the Centre's Mahamed Accord says the dead man was an all-around nice guy, a husband and expecting to soon become a father.

Clark can be forgiven for his frustration, but he went too far when he blamed the entire Somali community for the lack of police success. It would be akin to blaming the residents of Highlands for similar investigative hurdles in a deadly clash of outlaw bikers in that neighbourhood. Law-abiding citizens who weren't there and have no direct relationship for the participants in the violence would be furious to be lumped in with the deadly antics of outlaw bikers. So the Somali community complaint that they are being unfairly blamed is more than understandable. But we suspect Clark was hoping to apply some pressure on community leaders and the families of the Somali New Year's celebrants to encourage those present to co-operate. His thinking may have been that if it is still true that it takes a community to raise a child, then the community also shares some responsibility for that child. The victim, Jama, was apparently well-known in the Somali community.

But where do we go from here? Witnesses to the shooting do have a moral obligation to help solve these killings. There fear is understandible, but they have to know the killing won't stop until the guilty are brought to justice. There is an anonymous method of assisting police through CrimeStoppers. It is time for someone to pick up the phone and tell police what they saw.

Maybe the community is not so far off the mark with calls for an inquiry or some other public discourse on this issue. As Journal columnist Paula Simons points out, this is not a unique situation. History shows that many other ethnic communities new to this country -- Vietnamese, Sikhs, Jamaicans, Lebanese, Italians, Ukranians, Irish, Chinese and Jewish to name a few -- have in the past been in similar shoes. As Simons says, you would think by now we would have figured out a better way to deal with the rebellious, alienated, underemployed young men caught between two worlds.

Lets keep looking for solutions. We can all see the traditional response is not working and other ways must be explored to stop this senseless killing.

Source: The Edmonton Journal