The Tribune

By MALCOLM STRACHAN

HAVE we come to start treating murders as inevitable, just another fact of life – and death – in The Bahamas?

Our murder count continues to race along. Even the fact that we talk about such a thing as a murder count is horrifying. As if one is not too many.

On Thursday, Eddie Miller was shot dead in front of his family just after 9am. His children were in school uniform as three gunmen got out of a car and shot him at the Deep South Plaza.

The count says this was the 86th murder of the year – and it seems inevitable that we will, yet again, pass the 100 murder count by the end of 2024.

What has been striking in recent times has been the increasing boldness of criminals as they carry out such actions.

Carlos Reid knows the landscape of the criminal underworld better than many. He is a consultant with the Ministry of National Security, and has long held dialogues with those involved in gangs and crime in an effort to prevent more being drawn into that world, and to provide a path away from it.

He spoke about the latest murder in which it was said that the victim’s children gathered round him as he lay on the ground calling out “my daddy, my daddy”.

He said: “One time ago, if somebody had a beef with you and they saw you with the kids, they would let that slide. But nowadays, this new generation of gangsters, they don’t care. If you with your mother, grandmother, they don’t care; kids around.”

Another witness said: “Right now, it’s scary. These people ain’t got no regard when they coming to kill someone. They don’t care if your kids there, they don’t care if your wife there.”

In another murder, on Monday, two gunmen opened fire on a bar in Windsor Place, killing one man and injuring two more.

The victims were standing at a bar in the yard when two gunmen came from behind a wall and opened fire on the yard.

The officer in charge at the scene of the crime, Assistant Commissioner Zhivago Dames, said that the gunmen were “bold in their actions”.

Bold is certainly a word for how criminals are behaving these days. Fearless might be another.

After each of these murders, which demonstrate a level of ruthlessness that raises concern, there was nothing said about increased patrols, nothing about a clampdown on crime – although it should be noted ACP Dames reassured the public that police were active in the area.

But the level of bloodshed we have been experiencing seems to have become almost accepted, commonplace even.

There have been other instances of crimes which seem to show we have almost become inured to such activity. Last year, a man was shot dead as he left a gym at Harbour Bay. It was remarkable at the time – here was a shooting at a place that normally is completely safe, where crime is unheard of. A few weeks ago, there was an armed robbery at the Starbucks in the plaza, and it didn’t seem to generate the outrage that it should.

How did we get here? Well, we have had successive years when Police Commissioner Clayton Fernander has talked of hopefully not having more than 100 murders each year, only for us to go well past that number.

At the start of the year, amid a wave of murders in the country, Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis suggested that murders should be kept off the front pages of newspapers, as if hiding what is going on will somehow make it go away.

The justification was that such coverage is harming tourism. I would respectfully suggest that it is the crime itself that is harming tourism, not the reporting of it.

So what are we going to do about it?

Commissioner Fernander certainly does not seem to be forthcoming about the way forward. But then, as he also faces questions as to what is happening with the police corruption probe and why he is taking so long to deal with recommendations on prosecutions in connection with police-involved shootings, maybe he is reluctant to come before the microphones.

There should be widespread outrage at crimes of this level of boldness. Criminals should know that police will stop at nothing to find the killers in these cases. That there is a line they are crossing that will see them caught, prosecuted and jailed. That officers will press relentlessly to stop these killers, and send a signal to others.

A voice note went around after Thursday’s murder that suggested it might be the start of a wave of killings. As I write, that has not happened – which we must be thankful for, and which also makes one wonder about the accuracy of such social media comments.

But such commentary springs from the absence of information being provided officially. Nature abhors a vacuum, as the saying goes, and that holds true with information as well. Without any details of what the situation is, people speculate, and the speculation becomes what people talk about without an official line to contradict it.

The response to the recent killings has not shown that outrage, it has not been resolute, determined. It has not spelled out that this is not acceptable now, and cannot be accepted in the future.

Or will we sleepwalk to another year of more than 100 murders?

Silence cannot be the answer to the issues that we face, from the police or from the Minister of National Security.

What next? We truly need to hear some answers.