The Tribune

SHORTLY before 10 o’clock last night a message flashed on our night editor’s computer:

Police on way to investigate two murders. One occurred shortly after 6pm, victim died in hospital an hour later. The second — man shot on Cordeaux Avenue at 9:44pm – Police investigating – more information later.

While police were busy mopping up the carnage on the streets, our newly appointed Drug Czar was busy keeping political score.

With the rapid increase in murders, and no answers, the only consolation that National Security Minister Keith Bell could offer a long-suffering public was that crime would have been much worse had the FNM been the government.

How he arrived at that weighty conclusion is anybody’s guess.

May last year — the month the PLP were elected the government — closed with 19 murders for that month alone.

Before the May 7, 2012, election the police were investigating three murders.

At 11 o’clock on the night of the election, there were two murders — a mother and son. It all started during a PLP victory motorcade.

From that point on, violent crime seemed to accelerate. Now, a year, later it threatens to destroy our communities.

Two days after last year’s election night murder, police were investigating three more murders. Then, just after midnight on May 9, police were called to a killing on Kemp Road — by the time that day ended there were three additional murders. The following day, a teenager’s body was found in the bush. Two days later, there was another shooting with a stabbing death following within another two days. And so it continued under the new second-term PLP government until the month ended with 19 Bahamians in the morgue.

In all of our experience, we had never witnessed such an acceleration in violent crime. Yet, if we are to understand the new Security Minister correctly, it was a blessing that the PLP were now running the show. According to him the grisly scene could have been even worse under an FNM government.

To hear people like Mr Bell talk, it would seem that crime dug its ugly self out of the ground on the FNM’s watch and suddenly took off.

Like everything else, crime did not “just grow’d” like Topsy. It had a definite, if slow beginning in the early seventies, gathering momentum in the eighties and now taking its present toll. It was aided and abetted by the alarming increase in illegitimacy with children giving birth to unwanted infants, these being tossed on society without any home discipline. We are now reaping the seeds sown in the Pindling years.

We shall never forget a conversation that we had with Paul Thompson, in those early years when Joe Lehder, head of the Medelin drug cartel, flew the Colombian flag at Norman’s Cay, kept Bahamians off the island with dogs and armed men, and boasted that he belonged to Nassau’s inner circle. Those were the days when the Pindling government condemned the Opposition — mainly the late Norman Solomon — for daring to suggest that Lehder was a drug dealer who needed to be given his walking papers.

Mr Thompson, who retired from the Royal Bahamas Police Force as an assistant commissioner of police several years ago, was deeply concerned with the direction the Bahamas was taking. Born in Trinidad, as a young man recruited to the Bahamas police force, he had a deep love and concern for his adopted country.

In the eighties, he predicted exactly what is now happening in this country. It’s uncanny how true a picture he painted then of crime as it now is.

If Mr Bell wants to know how this creeping sickness, which has now grown to such proportions and threatens to destroy our society, took root he should sit down with Mr Thompson and have the humility to be educated. Until Mr Bell understands the problem, he will never be able to offer a solution.

The problems that we are battling today had their beginnings in the eighties.

Not understanding from whence it came, the new government was convinced that Urban Renewal 2.0 was the answer. And so they started spending large sums of money foolishly on clearing land, to flush out the criminals. There was no supervision, just large sums of money doled out to party supporters to take the machete to the root of many old trees, leaving an ugly, barren land. When they trespassed on private property and were asked what they were doing there, the inevitable answer was that they were acting on the authority of National Security Minister Bell – and no one dare stand in their way.

When advised recently by Opposition Leader Dr Herbert Minnis that he should stop playing politics with crime, but come to the table in a joint effort with the Opposition to defeat it, Mr Bell’s reply was: “I don’t know how one could take politics out of that equation because it really is the politicians who determine what legal framework would be created to address crime and other social ills,” said Mr Bell.

“The fact is,” he continued, “it is unfortunate that the leader of the Opposition would seek to politicise this.”

When asked to comment, former National Security Minister Tommy Turnquest refused to dignify such shallowness.

“We will never solve our problem if he’s saying things like that,” was as far as Mr Turnquest would go.

If Mr Bell thinks the new post created for him was so that he could keep political score and try to convince society that violent crime is on its way down, it is now time for this community to seriously think of bringing in foreign police officers, who will at least have no horses in the political race, and can concentrate their energies on removing the criminals from our communities.

It is now time for the community — if it wants security and peace of mind in the home — to seriously think of supplementing our local force with trained officers who can make the solution of crime their main mission. At least they can make objective assessments with no familial ties in the various communities and no political loyalties outside.