MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Police here say even as they will be deploying new strategies to combat a rise in murders and shootings, parents should stop turning a blind eye to children involved in the illicit yet lucrative lottery scamming that has been fuelling crime in Manchester. “A raid was carried out recently and [among those] we picked up were a 14-year-old, an 18-year-old, and [someone] 60 plus. When you check their phones, they have lead sheets.
Tell me, what is a 14-year-old doing with a lead sheet?” administrative officer for Manchester, Deputy Superintendent Natalie Hall-Williams asked residents of May Day, south of Mandeville on Monday during a community meeting. She raised the concern to highlight her point of the extent of scamming being rooted in Manchester, with some parents not being vigilant enough to deter the activity. “We need to start parenting the right way.
Something happens and the first thing you want to do is to take your child to the police station and say, ‘Officer my son, my daughter is giving me problems’, [but] it starts with you. You should check your children’s bags; it starts with a pencil, a ruler. You don’t ask questions to say, ‘Where did you get [those from]?
I didn’t give you that pen’, but you say nothing and that is how it starts,” she said. She continued to emphasise the worrying trend of the spoils of lottery scamming being accepted by many parents. Police personnel and agency representatives on a walk-through of May Day and Old England in Manchester on Monday.
(Photo: Kasey Williams) “They [children] leave school [and] you don’t know of them being gainfully employed. Under a certain age they cannot buy a lottery ticket and they come in and have a high-end vehicle. You don’t know where they get that cash from, but you sit and allow it, and turn a blind eye,” said Hall-Williams “The next thing, you see another [vehicle] come in and they ask, ‘aunty, mommy, daddy can I put it in your name’.
What signal is it that you are sending out there to that child? There is a saying that it takes a village to raise a child, but it seems as if that has gone through the window, it is like everybody is for themselves,” she added. She warned that there will be a relentless push against lottery scamming through Area Three’…
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