The Tribune

WHEN the current administration launched its anti-crime plan in response to the wave of killings that marked the start of this year, FNM chairman Dr Duane Sands described it as a “glossy brochure”.

He talked of it being filled with vague details and recycled information. Dr Sands said: “While a slick and glossy product with beautiful graphics, it was short on granular details. In all, given the severity of the problem being faced in the country, a glossy brochure as the basis of the way forward confirms that this is more about PR than governance.”

That’s an interesting phrase – more about PR than governance. In fact, it’s a thought that occurred in more than one conversation with The Tribune after the plan was launched. One veteran political expert said sometimes it is about being seen to do something, not necessarily actually doing something.

Which brings us to our story in today’s Tribune about the violence interrupter scheme.

Cast your mind back to 2022, and in April of that year, it was confirmed that talk show host Rodney Moncur had been hired as a consultant in the Ministry of National Security.

Communications director Latrae Rahming said Mr Moncur had been hired as a “violence interrupter” and insisted that his appointment brought value.

He said: “We believe that in order to solve community crimes you have to use people from the community who understand the dynamics of the community, who understand the gangs in the community and I can certainly say that Mr Moncur has been a proponent and advocate for quite a few years, particularly a proponent of the death penalty.”

At the time, it caused a stir – not least because of Mr Moncur’s colourful opinions. He has called birth control pills “evil” and “cancerous” and called the gender equality referendum in 2016 “witchcraft”.

It was not revealed how much Mr Moncur was being paid for his role. Also appointed at the time was Carlos Reid, who yesterday revealed that, despite the length of time that has passed since the announcement, the violence interrupter scheme has not yet been implemented.

Mr Reid said he has been doing work in the community himself, but that the scheme has not yet kicked in, though he hopes that will be done in the “very, very near future”. He said “it could go a long way in helping us influence the persons in these particular areas that need to be influenced and interrupt some of these situations before they can happen”.

When Dr Sands claims that the anti-crime plan is a glossy brochure, it implies that little will actually be done – so seeing that a much-vaunted scheme, that comes at presumably some measure of public expense to engage these community experts, has not yet been launched as we approach two years later, one wonders how seriously the situation is being taken after all.

In this column, after the anti-crime plan was unveiled, we did raise certain questions – such as how much funding was being allocated to the measures listed.

Saturation patrols tend to rack up overtime bills for police officers, for example, while other new measures would have a cost value attached. These items would not originally have been in the budget if indeed they were new strategies being launched by the government – so what was being spent? How would that affect our budget?

Or … is the opposing view, that this is about PR, what is really going on?

When senior figures in the administration come out to say that the violence interrupter scheme is important … and then it doesn’t happen, that makes one wonder how seriously it was considered in the first place.

Which of these other measures will we be looking at two years from now and finding they have not taken place?

And how much money will we have spent on consultants without using the expertise we are paying for?

One statistic will continue to tell its own story of how effective these schemes are, and that is sadly the murder count.

Police Commissioner Clayton Fernander described March 2022 as the “bloodiest month in our history” with 22 murders. That was the highest number of homicides ever recorded for a single month in the history of The Bahamas. They are not our words, they are his.

Last month, 20 murders were recorded, two short of that tally.

The anti-crime plan will be judged on its results. That is when it will prove whether it is a glossy brochure or a meaningful intervention. But why wait any longer on schemes that were hailed as crucial, such as the violence interrupter scheme? Get it going, or stop wasting time and money.