The Tribune

FOR THE first time yesterday, we heard a PLP Minister come close — the closest that any of them has ever come in the past five years — to admitting that no government can completely eradicate crime — certainly not the type of crime that has changed our way of life.

Dr Bernard Nottage, newly appointed National Security Minister, in a ZNS interview Monday, said that the best a government could do was to reduce crime to an acceptable level. Of course, there is no acceptable level, but at least it should be reduced to a level that citizens can once again feel safe in their homes.

For the past five years— from newly-elected Prime Minister Perry Christie down — the PLP has maintained that crime spiked because the FNM had discontinued the PLP’s so-called Urban Renewal programme. In fact, this programme was not stopped by the FNM, but rather remodelled and expanded.

We agree with former National Security minister Tommy Turnquest, who after a year in office, was satisfied that community policing would not stop violent crime, but would have a “dramatic impact” on such crimes as house and shop break-ins and armed robberies.

“When we are talking about the retaliatory nature of the majority of murders we see today, the domestic homicides, community policing won’t stop that. That takes a cultural shift,” said Mr Turnquest.

In answer to PLP chairman Bradley Roberts’ assertion in 2009 that the FNM government’s attempt to undermine the Urban Renewal programme “resulted in anarchy and chaos”, a police commissioner, now retired, could find no evidence to support that view. Although admitting that changes had been made in the programme, the Commissioner found that the changes were not only for the better, but gave the police more freedom to do the job of policing.

Since election day on May 7 — within a span of eight days – there have been nine murders. The PLP is now in charge. We are not so foolish as to blame the PLP for this, nor do we blame the FNM or the police, but we do blame society. And in the end, society is the loser.

If there is to be a change, the new government has to be realistic and come to terms with the causes of the social sickness. If the PLP expects to return to its old form of urban renewal — which many police officers resented because instead doing their job as policemen they had become social workers — their attempt will fail — and society will be worse off than before.

The root of the problem goes to the heart of society. With the advent of the drug trade our core values changed almost overnight. Success was no longer measured in righteousness, but in material possessions.

Every Bahamian can be wealthy, Sir Lynden once said. He didn’t say how they were to achieve this wealth, but another PLP politician, angered by a shouted taunt from someone in a crowd, yelled back something to the effect — “Don’t matter how I get my money, whether I work for it or teef it!”

It was a perfect start to a new era. Children saw the way easy money was made and couldn’t wait to get out of school to start selling the “weed.” Bahamians were living the high life on the narco-dollar when the crackdown came. Today, many of them, now armed with guns, moved underground. The turf wars were in and the vendettas are still being fought on our streets.

Family life has been destroyed. Children are having children and so, unlike the old days when grandmother minded her grandchildren while their parents went to their daily jobs, there are no grandmothers at home to help raise the children. Grandma is still young enough to be out earning her own living. Unsupervised children are on the streets or in gangs, and, like Topsy, raising themselves.

This society has lost it — and it is what’s left of the family, of the church, of the teachers, who, assisting the police will have to put on the brakes and help regain control of our communities.

There are still persons in shadowy corners today, who are being protected, and are literally getting away with murder. They can only be flushed out by a society that has had enough of the carnage and wants to return to a decent way of life.

The Templeton World Charity Foundation recently approved a $32,800 grant to support a family healing initiative, led by Dr David Allen, to get to the bottom of and try to heal the “tide of anger and violence that is taking a serious toll on Bahamian society”. This is one of many needed initiatives.

The long and short of it is that no government can do it alone, nor can the police, but if every decent member of society, the church and the schools joined the fight, the battle could be won.