KEY POINTS:
I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised at the numbers of callers who rang this week in support of Bruce Emery's bid to spend Christmas at home with his family as he awaits sentencing for the
manslaughter of Pihema Cameron.
The first couple of people off the blocks even said the case should never have gone to court.
I'd experienced this kind of attitude before when a young Otago uni
student died in an accident. Two young people, probably half-cut,
decided to hop into an empty wheelie bin and toboggan down Dunedin's
steepest street, Baldwin St. The bin collided with a parked trailer, killing the young woman instantly and seriously injuring her friend.
"Serves her right," spat a particularly righteous caller. #34;She shouldn't have been stealing other people's property." And this caller was followed by several more, all in the
same vein.
So really, when my callers on Wednesday night started saying that Pihema Cameron got exactly what he deserved, it wasn't a surprise - but it's still a shock to realise that people can be so mean-spirited and nasty.
One woman said Emery should never have been put in jail because he was acting in self-defence. When I pointed out that the jury had decided
otherwise, she said some of them probably had kids who were taggers
and that would have made them prejudiced. Wow.
In the face of that blinkered and wilful ignorance, reason and fact don't stand a chance. Caller after caller said Emery deserved a medal. That he was only doing what so many people wished they could do. That it was high time taggers and vandals got what Cameron got.
It was scary stuff. But looking at it from the callers' points of view, I think it's an indication of the fear and frustration felt by many older members of the community.
They know that if you call the police because somebody is tagging
your property, the police aren't going to come. They know, too, that if you confront the young oiks who are messing with your property there's a chance you'll end up dead.
So they see one young punk dead, one middle-aged white guy alive as
some sort of karmic rebalancing. But in this society, thank God, we're all considered equal.
The death of a young tagger is taken as seriously as the death of a
businessman. I can appreciate Emery's fury at finding his property being vandalised, again. I get annoyed with taggers and those mindless arses who destroy the bus shelters. And those who burn the benches at parks. And people who litter.
If life was a video game, I'd seek out and destroy the lot of them. But life isn't a game and if you take the life of another, there will be consequences.
I know what it's like to get that Jake the Muss, red mist fury.
When my daughter was young, she and a friend were walking down Queen
St and they were accosted by a couple of huge teenage girls who were
hassling them for money. I was following a little behind and when I
saw them touch my girl, I turned into a frenzied fury.
I flew at one of them, screaming invectives and had my hands around
her throat. Her friend dragged her mate away and that's the last we saw of them, but I hate to think what might have happened had I been armed. My rage might have been understandable but my reaction was out of all proportion to the offence.
We don't have capital punishment for tagging and nor should we. But it would be nice to see the cops being given quotas for the numbers of
taggers and vandals they catch, as well as quotas for driving offences.
Because it's the minor crimes that go unpunished that cause law-abiding citizens the most grief. And just a note to the Cameron family. Go easy on the beatification of your boy. He was at the very least drunk, stoned and up to no good. He was hardly a precious angel
called too young to Jesus.
He was a young man at the crossroads of his life. He might have become just another statistic - or he might have ended up a wonderful,
contributing member of society. We'll never know because he's dead. And Bruce Emery was responsible. For that, he has to pay a price.