The Tribune

“THERE are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” - Leonard H Courtney.

By SHARON TURNER

Lord Courtney’s quote refers to the twisting of information including statistics for one’s advantage. Over the past few months, the Bahamian people have been dealt one of the most untenable forms of dishonesty and disrespect their government could spin – the consistent insistence that the country’s very serious crime problem is not as bad as we and they know it to be.

Shady politicians say many things while campaigning. Countless promises are made, grand stories are told and sweet dreams are woven in a haze of pom-poms, t-shirts and revelry. What a politician says to try to get elected is one thing, but once elected, parties must make the transition from trying to become the government to being the government.

Since last year, the government has stood before the public and thrown out statistic after statistic, claiming that these figures show that “crime is down”. And that would be a wonderful thing if those figures were firstly true in every serious crime category, and, secondly, consistent with the Police Force’s own reports about the crimes for which they provide statistics.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the reporting of accurate statistics in their own right. The problem is when statistics are being used as part of a campaign, with the aim of proving that campaign’s theme.

And we know “crime is down” is a campaign on the government’s part because in the case of Minister BJ Nottage’s contribution to Parliament on the nation’s crime statistics this week, the figures were not reported as an annual total the way they ought to be, but were instead reported on the basis of politics – where only the numbers for the time period that the PLP government has been in office were referenced. This is an example of using and skewing statistics to bolster a particular campaign.

Campaign season is over

Elections are over, so the electioneering should be too. Behind every crime that happens in this country, there is a living, breathing victim – unless of course the crime is murder. Behind every crime is a person or persons left scarred, left living in fear or living with being violated. They are not a statistic.

When the government consistently announces that crime is down, and goes further to say that an urban myth they created is the reason, what they are saying to the public is that crime is less of a problem, and hence less of a priority for them to combat as a government.

They are saying that their urban myth is getting crime under control, and therefore the public does not need to look to the government to do anything more than to repeat “urban” again and again – because that chant has the power to enchant record numbers of criminals into ceasing their crimes.

They are also saying that once they toss out a statistic that suggests they are doing their job, they will get the people they believe to be lemmings to believe they are doing their job. Not everyone is lost or lazy about the statistics and messages the government is giving the public though. And it is those statistics that we will look into this week – because they betray the lies the Bahamian people do not deserve to have told to them.

Attempted murder

What is the salient difference between murder and attempted murder? One person lived and the other did not – it is as simple as that. If I shoot you six times and you manage to live, and shoot someone else six times and he dies, how is the one shooting incident less serious than the other? It is not.

If the number of persons dying via mostly shootings and stabbings have marginally decreased, but you have a huge rise in the number of people almost being killed in the same types of incidents, your serious crime problem overall has gone up, not down. It means potentially fatal violence is on the increase. It means the number of persons being shot or stabbed is higher. And that is exactly what happened in 2012.

When the new administration took office, the Commissioner of Police announced that attempted murder would no longer be included in the overall crime count provided in the Force’s annual statistics – a decision he has yet to successfully justify to sensible members of the public.

That change, whether initiated by him or the government, made no sense. It did not happen in all the years of reporting until now. It was made to create statistics in support of a lie – that lie being that serious crime is down because of the government of the day.

On November 8 of last year, the Force issued a separate figure for attempted murder that was a 125 per cent increase over the same period the previous year. It said that up to that point, 18 attempted murders had occurred. By the end of the year, the Force said its final count for attempted murders dropped from a 125 per cent increase to a 58 per cent increase – a whopping 67 percentage point drop in just under two months; giving its final count for the year as 19 attempted murders.

Now, if the media was even remotely paying any attention to what the Force said, they should have picked up that it would have been statistically impossible for attempted murder, in less than two months remaining in the year, to drop 67 percentage points.

They would have also realised the Force said that between November 8 and December 31, the attempted murder count only moved up one notch – from 18 to 19.

But based on the Force’s own reports, it is not true that only one case of attempted murder occurred during that period as they claimed. Between November 8 and December 31, the Force reported at least 13 incidents of attempted murder, and these are just the cases they chose to report – the press does not get many reports of shootings and stabbings when they happen:

• November 14 – A 29-year-old man was left fighting for his life after being shot by assailants at a Carmichael Road business establishment.

• November 17 – A Freeport man was left fighting for his life following a reported fight where he was bashed repeatedly in the head with a blunt object.

• November 17 – A 16-year-old was shot twice in Bamboo Town following a reported fight that occurred after he was approached by two men.

• November 19 – A Grand Bahama man was left in serious condition after being beaten and shot by a group of men in West End.

• November 21 – A 48-year-old Grand Bahama man was left in serious condition after being chopped multiple times with a cutlass by a man he knew.

• November 29 – A 26-year-old male of Hay Street was shot in the head on Dunmore Lane.

• December 2 – Fourteen-year-old Ashley Storr of Nassau Village was robbed and shot. The alleged assailant is charged with attempted murder.

• December 16 – A 26-year-old Hospital Lane man was left in serious condition after being shot by one of four men who approached him.

• December 19 – Two teens, a boy and a girl, were stabbed multiple times in Pinewood Gardens. A group of persons attacked the youngsters, repeatedly stabbing both.

• December 23 - A 26-year-old Windsor Lane man and a 23-year-old Rupert Dean Lane man were stabbed during an alleged argument. Both were rushed to hospital where they were “under heavy police guard”.

• December 26 – A double shooting on Third Street took the life of one man and left a teen in hospital. Two men in a vehicle approached both males and opened fire.

These are 13 incidents police say happened between November 8 and December 31. If you add these incidents to the total reported for 2012, the attempted murder figure would be at least 31, not 19. The Force said the total number of attempted murders for 2011 was 12. That would mean attempted murder for 2012 rose by at least 158 per cent. That is not down – that is alarmingly up.

Additionally, police reported 13 shootings and 11 stabbings between November 8 and December 31 that the Force described as “non life threatening” incidents.

Armed robbery

Commissioner Greenslade recently reported that armed robbery increased by 10 per cent last year. On the matter of armed robberies, the Force is not echoing Minister Nottage’s post-election campaign rhetoric.

Back on January 9, the Force issued a statement saying armed robberies had increased for the year. Superintendent Stephen Dean articulated the Force’s concern about the number of armed robberies in Nassau, much of which he said were occurring in the Carmichael Road and southeastern areas. And citing that January statement, the United States through its Embassy in Nassau urged Americans to watch out for this crime trend.

Throughout the second half of 2012, police officers repeatedly warned the public as the number of armed robberies at one stage became too much for the Force to control. It is nothing but self-serving counter-productiveness on the part of the government through its crime Minister to tout that “crime is down” when the Force itself over the past few months has indicated its struggle in dealing with armed robbery – one of the most traumatic of crimes against the person.

Armed robbery is a serious crime, so serious that it is an indictable offence. When Bahamians in the capital do not feel safe, it is not because they are imagining things or they do not support the government of the day. It is because violence against the person – shootings, stabbings and armed robbery – all increased in 2012 and into 2013. And instead of the government waking up from campaigning, buckling down and getting serious about how we can attack this trend, it is instead pleased to feed the public an illusion rooted in washed-out electioneering.

The “Urban” Myth

What we need to recognise is this – since the National Security Minister says serious crime is down and Urban Renewal caused it, he has essentially taken himself and the government off the hook. He doesn’t have to do a thing as crime minister since after all, Urban Renewal is Minister Brave Davis’ portfolio baby – not his.

Urban Renewal is not even paying its staff in many instances, has pushed down numerous structures and trees at a cost never revealed to the public and at one stage debased trained police officers to the role of bread and cream toaters – but this figment of an elder politician’s desire for a leadership legacy is being touted as having stopped criminals in their tracks?

I have often bemoaned and condemned the penchant of public figures to dumb down the Bahamian public for their benefit. The dumb down attempt (which in itself is an assault on one’s personhood) was carried out by Minister Nottage in his stating that an ad hoc programme in Nassau shows a direct correlation and causation between its work and the decrease in serious crime.

The only way a statement like that can be verified is through research – research that has not been done. Causation and correlation of this kind are determined by scientific analysis, not by the insidious anecdotes of politicians who ought to be focused on plausible solutions instead of fairy tales about how the inner city is a far safer place to live in now that a few trees and dilapidated houses are gone.

Incidentally, two of the serious crimes the Minister said have decreased because of Urban Renewal are rape and unlawful sexual intercourse. Tell us how government workers from 9am to 5pm Monday through Friday through Urban Renewal have stopped men from sleeping with underage girls and have stopped a man or woman from forcing someone to have sex against their will. These are the kinds of statements that show just how little respect our government has for even the most basic of our sensibilities.

Still no crime plan

The only crime plans Minister Nottage has announced since coming to office is a plan to revisit criminal sentences to see how convicts can get less jail time, and a plan to get prisoners back on the streets through “community service”. He has publicly toured the prison twice (except for the faeces-filled maximum security area, I would imagine) and has met with convicts and heard their cries.

He then emerges to tell us that our cries as victims and law-abiding citizens are decreasing, regardless of the facts to the contrary. There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics – and none of those are going to do a thing to turn the tide in the war on crime.

Meantime, while Minister Nottage was patting himself and his government on the back in Parliament, a shooting not far from Parliament brought a highly populated section of Over-the-Hill to a standstill.

It was yet another unfortunate crime in the nation’s capital, and one where given the Minster’s theatrical boastings about Over-the-Hill, was ironically an instance of real life contradicting fake art.

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