Ruminations

Blog dedicated primarily to randomly selected news items; comments reflecting personal perceptions

Friday, August 13, 2010

Please Complete The Questionnaire

Well, there's an interesting scenario and a rather novel response to it, one might think. Hazarding a guess, one might also think this was hugely experimental. And as such, representing as a signal failure. One can imagine how a community might feel more than a little unsettled, spooked and fearful to discover that among them, close to where they live, to people whom some might have known and many others might recognize, murder has interrupted three lives.

Presumably, the three people were not integrated into the community, as it were. For their absence appeared not to have been immediately noticed. Which meant that the people, living in a housing complex, had no curiosity about the whereabouts of a small family, husband, wife and three-year-old child, or there was little communication and little interest expressed by the community toward the family, and/or vice versa.

But they were absent in an actively present sense. For they had been murdered; 31-year-old Gray Nay Htoo, and 28-year-old Maw Maw along with their son Seven June Htoo. Their names identify them as having perhaps been fairly recent immigrants. Living among others with whom they may not have shared a language, a common culture and heritage. Perhaps explaining in part the lack of involvement on a social level.

When they were finally discovered by police, their bodies were in a state of decomposition. A horrible thing to have occurred; to be murdered and to be overlooked. One imagines the neighbours to feel more than a little vulnerable, for among them lived a family which likely kept to themselves, and they are no more; their lives violently taken away. Who might be next? Who would do such a dreadful thing?

And this appears to be what the police in Regina are mulling over, themselves. And they've taken an unusual step in attempting to recruit volunteers from among the people living in the complex to assist them in their search for answers. They have circulated a questionnaire to the residents of the complex, soliciting their co-operation in their search for answers.

And oh yes, their search for the killer or killers of the unfortunate family. People have been requested to co-operate, to write in detail what they can recall having been engaged in during the week that would equate to when the homicides occurred. Some residents are definitely not amused, but they are most certainly bemused. Who would not be? One of the queries: "Do you know who murdered those people?"

Really, it asks just that. "If you were going to conduct the investigation, how would you do it?" The form moreover, carefully instructs people to think deeply and thoroughly before committing their responses to the paper provided. Asking people to relate their personal opinion on what caused the murders. And, incredibly, going on to ask directly whether the respondents themselves actually committed the murders.

Or, perchance, happened to take part in the murders. "I think it's insulting", one unnamed resident fumed. And isn't that an understatement. "Every time people are murdered, do they go to their neighbours and give them something like this? I just think it's terrible. ...I feel like we're really being interrogated and unfairly." Another hazards the opinion that the tenor of the questionnaire appears to require the assistance of a good defence lawyer.

As for the Regina Police Service, responding obliquely to a direct question on the particular investigatory details and The VIEW Questionnaire, "We know and have heard loud and clear that people want us to find the person or persons responsible, and that means carrying out a thorough investigation." That's what they're doing.

In the process thoroughly demeaning peoples' sensibilities and even the level of their intelligence. Everyone, it would appear, is a potential suspect when the investigating authorities appear to lack the professionalism to do their work without harassing people already under stress as the safety and security of their homes and their lives are under question.

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