Dr Hubert Minnis
By NICO SCAVELLA
Tribune Staff Reporter
nscavella@tribunemedia.net
FREE National Movement Leader Dr Hubert Minnis yesterday called for hanging to be carried out in the country, along with the introduction of a gunfire detection system and the use of drones to aid the Royal Bahamas Police Force in fighting crime.
Dr Minnis said he is “not prepared to sit idly by” and allow criminals to “continue killing each other without trying with every fibre of my being to stop the carnage.”
Also stressing that the confiscation of illegal firearms “must be priority number one,” Dr Minnis called for a “community revolution,” in which churches, the police and others would join forces in an effort to remove illegal guns from the hands of “our misguided sons.”
Dr Minnis’ comments came hours after a man was shot dead yesterday morning outside a home on Burial Ground Corner, marking the country’s 94th homicide for the year.
The death was the third in four days this week.
Despite the increasing violence, and the likelihood that this year’s murder count will surpass 2014’s, government officials have been relatively silent on the matter.
Yesterday, however, Dr Minnis provided The Tribune with his methods for tackling the country’s crime problems.
“As hanging is on our books, we must hang,” he told The Tribune. “The laws must be enforced and hanging must be done.”
He added: “I am not prepared to sit idly by and allow them to continue killing each other without trying with every fibre of my being to stop the carnage. I will not surrender to apathy or hopelessness. The nation is tired of talk. No more talk. Now it’s time for action. Too much blood is flowing through our streets.”
Dr Minnis also called for the government to explore other crime fighting strategies, adding that the removal of illegal firearms from the streets “must be priority number one.”
“Some solutions the government must look at, we must have a community revolution with involvement of the churches and assistance of all their programmes,” he said. “We must extend counselling to the victims’ families and extended families so as not to allow contained rage and anger to manifest itself at some later date. We must introduce gunshot detection systems, which would allow within seconds, detection from where a gun is fired. We must have cars stationed within these areas so as to have quick and immediate response. We must accelerate our regulations for drones.”
He added: “The government has failed us. They have lied to us in terms of them having resolutions for crime. Our nation is in crisis. If we are to survive and try to tackle the hard problems, including the growing spirit of crime, we must lead by example. We cannot send mixed messages, for example, the Attorney General (Allyson Maynard-Gibson) in a conflict of interest and the Alfred Gray matter.
“I would like to invite every community-based citizen, the commissioner of police, every district commander in the RBPF, the president of the Christian Council and other religious leaders to join me in going to each and every neighbourhood in New Providence, house to house, especially the inner cities to convince our misguided sons engaged in criminal activities to give up their guns.”
“If they are all serious about crime, then let’s walk in and ask for the guns. Let’s move in and show them that we care. We want to assist and move our country forward.”
Despite being a punishment for murder, there hasn’t been a hanging in the Bahamas since David Mitchell met his fate at the gallows on January 6, 2000.
Various landmark rulings of the London-based Privy Council, this country’s highest court of appeal, have made it increasingly difficult to carry out capital punishment.
The Bahamas hanged 50 men since 1929, according to records kept at the Bahamas Department of Correctional Services, formerly Her Majesty’s Prisons.
Five of them were hanged under previous Ingraham administrations; 13 were hanged under the 25-year rule of the Pindling government; and the others were executed between 1929 and 1967.
Currently standing at 94, this year’s murder count is likely to outpace 2014’s year-end figure of 123.
According to The Tribune’s calculations, homicides have increased by 24 per cent compared to this period last year. As of August 12, 2014, the country had recorded 76 murders.
The bloodiest months for this year so far have been February and July with 15 murders each, according to The Tribune’s records.
This newspaper’s records also show that there were 14 homicides in May, 12 in both March and April and 10 homicides in January.
Last year, the country hit 100 murders in November.
Recent attempts by The Tribune to get National Security Minister Dr Bernard Nottage to comment on crime have been unsuccessful.
Comments
ObserverOfChaos 9 years, 4 months ago
What good does hanging do, (or any other capital punishment) when the criminals know that the court systems are bent in favor of delays, dismissal, bribery etc!? Deal with the judicial system too Bahamas! Maybe we should start the hangings with some of our pitiful politicians?!
TruePeople 9 years, 4 months ago
bey he talking fool. He just tryina pin blame for crime on PLP an act like he could solve the issue with more state sanctioned murder. Problem is dese fools don't realise the logic they using to kill people, is the same logic people in the streets is using to kill there one another.
asiseeit 9 years, 4 months ago
Sad to say this but violence (hanging) is the only language these criminals understand and react to. Hang a couple and see the difference in attitude.
TruePeople 9 years, 4 months ago
so when dey is get shot dead in the street they ein a deterrant.... but rope... bey dat gugh scare then sensible ...
jackbnimble 9 years, 4 months ago
I agree with Dr. Minnis. We cannot continue to just sit idly by and watch the carnage. The present Government is obviously clueless. Frankly, the Minister of National Security needs to be fired and replaced with someone who is not afraid to answer the hard questions. If you need help just ask instead of continuing to ignore the issues and wish them away.
If we need to entrench capital punishment in the constitution then lets just do it or take it off the books. The Privy Council has been going crazy with our ineptitude and our inability to take charge of our own country's laws and enforce them.
Sickened 9 years, 4 months ago
I would like to know how many of these dead men have educated parents. And if those parents have decent jobs earning a wage that can support a family. I bet you very, very few do.
The number one problem in our society is that we have soooo many people with little to no income having kids that they can not afford to have. These kids have now grown up with little to no income and they are having kids that they cannot afford to keep. A person living in poverty cannot afford more than one child. The chances that a child living in poverty will make it out of poverty is sooo slim. Sure it happens and there are many intelligent kids that come from poverty but I bet you that those few successful children come from caring homes and not from homes where the father is a gang member and the mother is a 10 cent Ho.
I also bet you that if you asked the teachers of each and every one of these dead young men if they saw this day coming that they would say yes. Too bad we can't hang these kids before they start killing, robbing and raping.
newcitizen 9 years, 4 months ago
Education and proper family planning. We will continue to suffer as a country until these are improved. We need a national campaign on the options for birth control and we need to educate the children in this country. The best way out of poverty is to educate yourself and the more people that escape poverty, the less crime there will be. Crime and poverty go hand in hand.
Wideawake 9 years, 4 months ago
Education about Family Planning and readily available birth control products are essential. However, what about the young girls from broken homes who WANT to become pregnant, either to " catch a man", or because they know other single mothers who tell them that their baby is the first person who ever loved them, and that their baby us the first person they have ever loved?
The only real solution is more love in each and every home, more community outreach work by the churches, the teaching of Family Values in the schools, and most importantly, COMMITTED PARENTING by every mother and father in The Bahamas.
newcitizen 9 years, 4 months ago
Absolutely. It is a sad state to see how broken the family structure is in this country. There are so many children that don't even have one loving parent, let alone two. On top of that, there are a serious lack of role models for these children outside of the home. We need strong educated woman and men who have broken out of poverty to give these kids hope. They need to be able to see that with education, hard work and dedication they can do and have things they will never have access to by staying uneducated.
Wideawake 9 years, 4 months ago
As always, Love IS the answer!
Sickened 9 years, 4 months ago
Agreed.
My wife and I have university educations and are working professionals and WE struggle, both financially and with our time, to help our kids get decent 'B' average grades. We spend at least 2 hours each school night with our children helping them with homework and projects and critical thinking (which they don't seem to get at school for some reason) and they still have a hard time getting A's in school. I can only imagine the struggle for these ten's of thousands of kids who only have one parent (who only has a poor high school education) and live in an area with gun shots every night and gangs on every corner.
Too large an area of our country is now a ghetto where it is almost impossible to make it out. We need to see how other countries dealt with their ghettos. Perhaps they solved the problem or perhaps they just moved the people out of one ghetto into others. I really don't know.
TruePeople 9 years, 4 months ago
They'll generally 'gentrify' a ghetto, and relocate poor people elsewhere (ie. kick them out). Also done is mixing low to mid/high housing, so that you don't get 'poor neighbourhoods'. Both of these are done somewhat strategically to isolate the impoverished from each other so that they would be less likely to group together into 'gangs' or activist groups or whatever. They also station police around 'lower income areas' and have them basically lock down those areas to where police is trying to detain or arrest you at a ridiculous frequency, for minor to no issues. Also become more common is secret police video cameras, which is legally grey as it is a privacy issue, but...... law is above the law .....
At the end of the day, those in power don't help poor people because it is not in their self interest. More crime give political positioning, increased funding, etc. etc.
birdiestrachan 9 years, 4 months ago
Dr: Minnis I believe is a Roman Catholic, they do not believe in the Government committing Murder. that is what hangings is. But the majority of Bahamians will say :"hang him high" and Bran calls for hangings in Rawson Square. But who will perform the task?
Innocent people have been executed. and persons who have carried out executions are troubled by it in their later days. Guilty people go free, and innocent people are convicted it all depends on skill of your lawyer, or the intelligence of the jury. But as far as Minnis goes he is only looking for votes, and he wants to be PM. No matter the cost,
Honestman 9 years, 4 months ago
Hanging solves nothing and is merely an act of desperation designed to convince the populace that government is being strong. The next government should instead concentrate on instituting a zero tolerance towards corruption, freedom if information, a complete overhall of the judicial system, collaboration with foreign police forces, and a major increase in the education budget. Minnis is appealing to the crowd and should know better.
TalRussell 9 years, 4 months ago
My Comrades, no study by Minnis, would be adequate without reminding him that on the very some pages of his old law book, right there after Hang 'Em High,” he will find Heretics, Apostasy and Blasphemy, that you better not dare challenge or deny Bahamaland's accepted preacherman's authority. Didn't we see how angry they were when, we the people, at the polling stations, did challenge their getting in beds all them illegal numbers men's operators? I think that old law on the books, does calls for the judges sends your backsides to jail, for up to 20 years, hard labour.
larry 9 years, 4 months ago
Hanging is not a deterrent or solution to murder it is the sentence handed down from a judge after a person is convicted of unlawfully taking of a life and should be treated as such.
Zakary 9 years, 4 months ago
Hanging is not a deterrent or solution to murder it is the sentence handed down from a judge after a person is convicted of unlawfully taking of a life and should be treated as such.
I totally agree with you, it’s just this simple
The popular argument says; “Hanging is not a deterrent or solution to murder”.
But nothing in the world ever was...
I can’t say I would support hanging in our system with its current state though, because it only takes sitting on a court case once or twice to understand that our judicial system is pretty much one big mess. There is so much protectionism and maneuvering going on among the jury and witnesses that it’ll just give you a headache. If it was cleaned up, you bet I’d be all in.
As for for the Opposition Leader, he is simply appeasing the masses, and knows quite well, as many of us already know, that calling for hanging is pretty much a negligible endeavor. Let’s be honest, the world has changed, and a growing majority of people vehemently oppose the death penalty.
A man can kill and live out the rest of his years comfortably in a jail cell. Now of course if he killed your daughter, you’d be at the start of the line gunning for the death penalty.
Wideawake 9 years, 4 months ago
While the death penalty may not be a deterrent to murder in every case, I believe it might be in some cases. Certainly the death penalty is REVENGE and to the families of some murder victims revenge is sweet!... and it might help heal their aching hearts and help them move on with their lives with some sense of closure. I think that the families of murder victims, are themselves victims of the crime and helping them heal should be a consideration.
Finally the best argument for the death penalty might be the certainty that the murderer absolutely cannot kill again!
Zakary 9 years, 4 months ago
Finally the best argument for the death penalty might be the certainty that the murderer absolutely cannot kill again!
I totally agree!
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