By KHRISNA VIRGIL
Tribune Staff Reporter
kvirgil@tribunemedia.net
AMID criticism of the Royal Bahamas Police Force’s leadership, former Assistant Commissioner of Police Hulan Hanna said there is no room for side discussions while Bahamians continue to fall victim to criminal activity.
He suggested that blame should not be placed solely on the police force for the country’s crime woes because it is a problem that required the involvement of all stakeholders.
Mr Hanna was asked by this newspaper to comment on the ongoing public discourse on crime and the police force that has repeatedly made headlines.
Most recently, Prime Minister Perry Christie said it was up to Police Commissioner Ellison Greenslade to ensure that tougher crime fighting measures were executed this year.
His statement came just days after former Deputy Commissioner Quinn McCartney renewed calls for new leadership in the fight against crime as the country saw a new homicide record in 2015.
While he did not say specifically to whom he was referring, it was widely perceived that the comments were directed at Mr Greenslade.
State National Security Minister Keith Bell has also been critical of Mr Greenslade suggesting in November that the commissioner had failed to carry out all of the government’s crime fighting initiatives.
Mr Hanna said: “Let me just say this, the work of the police is tantamount to the work of God. That is to say that every police officer is essentially a minister of God.
“It is his sworn duty to carry out the law in a way that is consistent with the Constitution and in a way that will guarantee the rights of every citizen. Beyond that the sidebars and the side discussion that invariably will come is something that every active police officer should leave that in the domain where it is and focus his job on building the country.”
Asked if he was also referring to top officials, Mr Hanna responded: “Yeah. We need to build the country. See when we have our discourses as noble, objective, or as meaningful as they may be, today people are still being robbed and murders are still being committed.
“So our focus as a group of law enforcers, our mandate has to be that of doing the work that we have been hired to do.”
He added: “It’s a sad thing in any community when the survival of a community is only based on what the police is or is not doing. Every single institution of the community ought to be intimately and intricately involved in the preservation of its life.
“If you think that the only way that people can get well is by having a doctor in the hospital then you miss the technicians, the nurses and all of the component parts that makes the hospital run. And so its rather unfortunate that in our country we try to make the police the be all and the end all.
“The police is but a microcosm of what the wider community needs if we are going to have holistic community life in the Bahamas and certainly New Providence,” Mr Hanna said in a recent interview.
The former ACP resigned from the RBPF in 2014 after more than 30 years of service, reportedly to focus on his work in the church.
Comments
lionfish 8 years, 10 months ago
Can The Tribune please turn off that weather forecast video that comes on whenever you open a page? Lower right corner, black box. It is extremely annoying and if you look at more than one page even more so. Thank you.
TruePeople 8 years, 10 months ago
Are the police volunteer workers? or self-employed? no, they are employed by the state to serve the state. As such it is very distasteful for politicians to try to shrug all responsibility for public safety and scapegoat the police force, and particularly the commissioner for the countries problems.
A ship is sinking, and one man is bailing water. There was a captain, there were service and maintenance men, sailing crew, etc etc etc. Now the ship catching water and is only Greenslade down there bailing water with his one bucket.
Are we really gone blame him because the ship is sinking? are we gone blame him that the ship still catching water?
He's the only one i see doing a damn thing, meanwhile everyone standing round, weighing down the boat, and not only criticizing the man, but somehow trying to insinuate that the ship catching water is somehow his fault and responsibility.... It ein that the captain never check his ship, it ein that service bey dem is steady skylarking, it ein that the sailors dem too drunk to do work, no, it's all ya little bucket boy fault?!?!?!
This finger pointing blame game on behalf of our elected officials is truly disgusting and emblematic of why this damn country is sinking.
proudloudandfnm 8 years, 10 months ago
This is a gang war. The police though are obviously not fighting a gang war. So who should we blame?
Stop with the stupid excuses. Of course it's the police's fault.....
MonkeeDoo 8 years, 10 months ago
Looks like they cut the weather report off. Nice !
MonkeeDoo 8 years, 10 months ago
No shit - right back on !
birdiestrachan 8 years, 10 months ago
Mr: Hanna is correct. There is to much blame going around. And the people who are really responsible go free. It is all about the hearts and minds of people and what kind of homes they came out of. it is not the Government or the Church fault. The home is the first church and the first school.
TruePeople 8 years, 10 months ago
so what are you suggesting Birds? the home? what home? who's home? i guess it's the homes who are murdering, not the young men. I guess it's homes that are smuggling guns and drugs across our boarders, not international criminal organizations. I guess it's the home that has resulted in such a woefully high rate of unemployment, not the gov't. I guess it's homes who let violent offenders back out on the streets on bale, not the courts. I guess it's the homes fault that our education is a D average, not the education system.
I guess to fight this we should get rid of all homes in the country... they are obviously the problem........
Godson 8 years, 10 months ago
In addition of being falsely accused and incorrectly used as a scapegoat for incompetency in the political and other social authorities, it has always been my position that the Commissioner of Police, himself, has been and was unwise to have subsumed responsibility for something that has nothing to do with him or his portfolio as Commissioner of Police.
Poor thing has allowed his 'Office' and 'Officers' to have been carrying the bag for the blame for as long as I can remember.
The operative words to focus on in the name title 'The Royal Bahamas Police Force' is 'POLICE' and then 'FORCE'. The law Institution is meant to be a social tool that is called into play to REGULATE (that what it means to police), and then, where there is a breach in the regulations/rules/laws/orders etc, the Institution is called upon to help to arrest the offenders and to the en-FORCE-ment of the law. He, nor his officers, are the leaders of the citizens/the people of this Country. This is not 'A POLICE STATE'
The people are only following their elected leaders to the extent that the leaders are able to inspire them. If then these persons hold themselves out as our leader, then turn around and notice that no one is actually following them, they then ought to conclude that they are by themselves, and, are only out for an exercise, a walk. Leadership is 95% inspiration.
In a significant amount of cases, persons are doing criminal acts because that is what they are inspired to do or what they feel led to believe is the one alternative to survive, resolve issues or to remedy some injustice done to them. Otherwise, there is absolutely no light in and Judicial or Criminal Justice systems. Moses and Jesus taught the people... this was essential. However, one can hardly teach anyone if they are not able to inspire the audience to whom the teachings are needed. Nor are the leaders able to reconcile with the present generation. Personally, I have been waiting to be taught something of value from the leaders of this Country from 1966 and I am still waiting... HELL NO!!! ...I went on and got mine enlightenment through tertiary education by the help of The LORD.
But too many of Commissioner Greenslades' ranking officers were enjoying the false but nostalgic feeling of being important and projecting themselves as being indispensable to law and order. I have always argued that Our Police Force has been operating out of protocol for years.
I hope now that they realized how their egos have cause them to act out inappropriately and disproportionately to their own embarrassment and the decline of us all inclusive of other institutions and governing bodies.
Stapedius 8 years, 10 months ago
Quinn McCartney is a coward. He has been like a teenager posting comments on Facebook. Really disappointing.
Emac 8 years, 10 months ago
For those complaining about the weather report, there is a pause button you know. We must be cognizant of the fact that the Tribune is losing revenue whenever people decide to read the news online instead of buying a newspaper. Therefore, to make up for those lost revenues, the Tribune must participate in certain online ads. I am not sure if the weather thing is one of them, but we cannot complain when there are ads along with the stories. Yep, that's how most online newsfeed survive.
TigerB 8 years, 10 months ago
Paul Thompson said the samiiar words in an editorial yesterday and I wrote in response, but it all boils down to this, the responsibility falls squarely on those who get paid to do a job, no one else. We the tax payers cannot fire the entire police force we have to take cue from the NBA or NFL, the coach always is the fall guy, fire him and take a chance on someone else, its not personal, it never is!...If you hire a maid to clean your house and they are not effective at it, what do you do? You are hired to manage a certain entity and it fails under your leadership what do you do, keep complaining? There has to be change... so we take a chance and see if we get lucky and just loose 140 lives this year as opposed to 149 and then complain more?
TruePeople 8 years, 10 months ago
Well what if the hiring manager is shit at their job? what is the supervisors are not ensuring employees are working properly?
fire the employees? you gone still get the same problems because the problem is systematic, not isolated to one person or select group of people. It is systematic, from the HOA to the home.
Untill anyone round here takes some small piece of responisibility then it gone be the same thing over and over.
People dem is too good at pointing fingers, and in this day and age if yuh ein pointing fingers is like you pointing a gun, either way the mentalitiy is the same "You're the problem!!!"
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