The Tribune

By MALCOLM STRACHAN

WHILE the pandemic along with the election and its aftermath have been front and centre in public discussion for a long time now, make no mistake – the spectre of crime has not gone away.

The news of four deaths from shootings over the weekend in two different incidents is a stark reminder of that.

In the first shooting on Friday, a group was doing nothing more than sitting on a porch when two gunmen approached and opened fire. Two men were killed at the scene and another died later from his wounds.

Then, just two hours later, a man was sitting in his car outside a business on Carmichael Road when a gunman approached and shot him. He died the next day.

You wouldn’t think from the election campaign that crime was much of a problem these days. The focus instead was on COVID recovery, both from the virus itself and the economic effects it brought with it.

The PLP manifesto had just one short section on crime – in which it pledged to “ensure that the necessary reforms are executed for a safe Bahamas”. The party said it would “strengthen the nation’s border protection with increased funding to RBDF and Immigration Department,” “increase investment in the Community Policing Unit for community policing throughout The Bahamas,” “introduce research-based analysis and policies on countering anti-social behaviour, violence and crime,” and “establish partnerships between the Department of Corrections, BTVI, UB and the National Training Agency.”

Since coming into office – and it is early days, let us not forget – we have heard little of any of that. The National Security Minister seems to have been more focused on staffing issues, whether it is moving prison staff around, or criticising police over leaving a woman in a cell where she was subjected to an indecent assault from a male cellmate or for the secrecy over tribunal outcomes. Some of those are important subjects to tackle – but there’s no sign of the new government’s plan for a safe Bahamas yet.

Earlier this month, Police Commissioner Paul Rolle revealed a 26 percent rise in crimes against the person. That includes murder, robberies, rape and more.

Murder alone is up by 61 percent.

Despite that, Commissioner Rolle was keen to focus on crime being down overall by two percent. However, when asked if curfews and emergency orders had played any part in that crime reduction, his hackles rose.

“Which curfew are you referring to? Are you telling me that the work that these officers did day-in and day-out, that it didn’t have anything to do with that? I don’t accept that,” the police chief said.

“Why don’t we look at the officers and the work that the officers have done? I have said that the officers have done a tremendous amount of work. I gave you the facts of what we did. I don’t have anything (about) what curfew did because curfew did not give me a report, but I gave you a report about the officers. Let’s just focus on that. I can speak to that.”

Well, let’s focus on that. After all, back in January Commissioner Rolle was saluting the reducing in murder figures then – down by 23 percent. He proudly said: “This is the least amount of persons killed in a year in 15 years.”

Again, he dismissed the suggestion that COVID restrictions which kept people off the street for hours each day might have played a part in the reduction as “nonsense” and credited the hard work of police officers instead.

He said: “Y’all have to give us the credit because we have done a whole lot and when crime goes up, we take responsibility.”

Fine then, murders have now gone up, take the responsibility. What are police doing differently since it hit that low number, if COVID restrictions really had no effect, Commissioner Rolle? Or did they really play a part?

More importantly, as we face this new rise in cases, what is this “research-based analysis and policies on countering anti-social behaviour, violence and crime” which the PLP feels will make a difference now that it is in government?

All this current focus on promotions and staffing looks a lot like rearranging the deckchairs – but we’re still on the Titanic when it comes to our murder rates.

These killings shatter homes, destroy families, leave children without parents. Worse, they can lead to reprisal shootings as gangs take on gangs. Our crime rates are a frequent feature of warnings from the US, something we can well do without as we try to rebuild our economy.

Four killings in one weekend have reminded us there is a long way to go to solve this problem – and that it is time for this new government to show us how it plans to do so.