IT’S well established that the police need all the help and co-operation they can get from citizens to fight the scourge of crime.

The horrifying, record-breaking murder figure — 1,680 — for 2009 underlines the need for that police/public co-operation. That need comes further to the fore when the untenable situation of Jamaica having among the lowest police to population ratios in the English-speaking Caribbean is taken into consideration.

Fear of criminal reprisal has often been cited as a reason for people failing to assist the police. Anecdotal evidence suggests that — irrational though it may seem — some people are afraid even to make a telephone call to provide the police with information.

It is in that context that we take note of the bravery of a taxi driver who, having witnessed the carjacking of a fellow cabbie by two gunmen, used his own vehicle to chase the thieves.

The story as told by the Observer is that the chasing taxi driver kept blaring his horn to attract attention during the high-speed drive along Waltham Park Road. The episode ended badly for the thieves, who apparently lacked the requisite driving skills. They ended up crashing their stolen car — one sustaining injuries that proved fatal and the other captured by police as he hid in a yard close to the crash site.

Our hero could have simply taken the registration number of the stolen car, called the police on his cellphone and left it at that. Some will even suggest, perhaps with good reason, that such would have been the correct thing to do. Certainly, he would have done his civic duty.

But as it turned out, our taxi driver’s instinctive action ensured the criminals did not escape.

Such proactivity, we suspect, is anathema to criminals. For the same reason communities with strong, organised neighbourhood watch systems or simply a culture of individuals consciously watching their neighbour’s back are much less prone to criminality than others.

We note that in the same story about the carjacking and car chase, there was a call for taxi drivers to unite against criminals.

“We just have to try to come together as a team now and see if we can get some good police officers to work with us that any problem we have they can be there for us,” a driver was reported as saying.

It seems to us that this should be the cry and the intent of law-abiding people in every community, in every organisation, across the country. If that unity and determination to battle crime can be forged with the guidance and supervision of the police, the evildoers and parasites will have to retreat.