The Tribune

By Malcolm Strachan

IT is hard to get away from the topic of crime with the way this year has started.

January over, and 20 murders in the month. February just started and, well, we already have another “bloody weekend”. Seems that has become the standard these days.

Yesterday morning, a man was shot dead in Nassau Village. On Saturday morning, a man was found shot dead in his car over at Yamacraw. Another shooting on Friday followed what seems to be a new trend of people being shot when they are driving – with the victim being hit in the torso, losing control of his car and crashing into another vehicle, knocking that one into a collision with a motorbike. Miraculously in that incident, no one was killed – but it seems pretty clear the shooters don’t care who gets hurt, their chosen targets or bystanders.

For me, that lack of respect for any part of the fabric of society was summed up by another incident on Friday – a police officer hurt when a car backed out of a yard and hit his motorbike. The officer had to be taken to hospital. What did the car driver do? Did he stop to see if the officer was ok? Did he call for assistance? No, he abandoned his car and ran off.

Funeral homes are struggling with the murder rate, with the Bahamas Funeral Directors Association president last week talking about there being a need to share personnel and equipment because of the added burden.

This weekend, it was somewhat jarring to be hearing reports of the latest murders and shootings only to see video of the nation’s SWAT team off taking part in an international competition. I hope they had plenty of back-up left behind, but the optics … let me tell ya, I did a double then a triple take at that.

And then there were two other stories that gave me pause. There was former Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis up in the House hinting that some big-time government contracts had been given out to major criminals.

He didn’t name names but he named places, saying he was “talking about Abaco, he (Prime Minister Philip Davis) knows I’m talking about Bozine Town, he knows I’m talking about Pinewood, he knows I’m talking about individuals who was extradited from the Dominican Republic and he knows I’m talking about individuals that served time… I can go on and on”.

I wish he would – given that we haven’t got anywhere close to having a functional Freedom of Information Act and that the government is still shy about saying what contracts it is giving out, there’s little Johnny Public can do to get that information. Maybe that’s why we don’t have such information available.

Then there was the second story – the one that tells us that the government has been paying consultants for nearly two years for a “violence interrupter” scheme that still has not started.

Come on, man, are they serious?

The word came from Carlos Reid – who I have a lot of respect for, he has done a lot of good work on the streets and with people who are involved in gangland activity to try to steer them to a better path. It is not his fault if the government cannot find its way to getting the scheme started.

It would be nice if Rodney Moncur, one of the other consultants involved, could find his way to a microphone to talk about what he has been doing while taking the taxpayer dollars, but even better if Minister of National Security Wayne Munroe could pipe up to say why a scheme discussed in Office of the Prime Minister briefings has not been able to get started. Maybe if it had started when it was announced in 2022, some of the violence we have been experiencing might have been interrupted. How much has been spent, and what is the value we have received from that money?

When will we see these violence interrupters swing into action? For the financial outlay, what do we expect to get out of it as a nation?

If you were in private business, you would look at who you are hiring and what your product is from that employee. In government, it seems you take someone on a contract and forget to ask them to do what you hired them to do.

The mess over at Road Traffic, the tax portal online and the boat registration fee U-turn only adds to such thoughts.

I can’t even ask the question what is government going to do about the spike in murders – because if they haven’t even done what they said they were going to before, what is any pledge made now worth?

It’s too late. The murders have happened. Now we’re trying to stick a Band-Aid on a gushing wound.

There was talk of “more intrusive policing” but I’ve seen a bunch of road blocks manned by officers who seemed to wonder what they were doing out there at that time of day and waving a bunch of drivers past.

A month of 20 murders and we send our SWAT team off to take part in some games. A month of 20 murders and still not seeming to slow down. A month of 20 murders and we’re paying people for nothing and no one shamed enough to come out and say when they will get on with the schemes they already announced.

The police can only do what they have the resources to do. But is this administration serious? It’s time they showed it.