The Tribune

THE PAST week’s crime news was so disturbing it could give goose bumps the shivers.

In a matter of days, the police blotter recorded enough crimes for a new season of ‘Law & Order’.

On Thursday, a member of the Royal Bahamas Police Force was held up and robbed at gun point. There were reports he was doused with gasoline and threatened with being set on fire. Sometime between Saturday night and Sunday morning, a popular and well-respected businessman, the co-owner of Via Caffe at the north end of Parliament Street diagonally across from the Cabinet Office, was gunned down execution style. His bullet-riddled body was found shortly after 7am in his Mercedes parked along Montagu foreshore. While police were still taping off that scene, across town three churchgoers were held up and robbed of what was believed to be the collection plate following services at Mount Tabor.

Those were just the highlights in a week filled with many gruesome incidents.

Shrug them off at your own peril, Bahamas, or wake up and face the fact that crime is out of control and if we want a nation where we can be free to live without fear for our lives or the lives of our children and loved ones, it is time to shout “enough! We have had enough and we won’t take it any more”. The chorus has to grow louder and louder. Enough, we won’t take it anymore. Scream it. Let your MP know. Let the police know. Let the criminals know.

We have to stop taking it and thinking that someone else will fix it. Yes, it is time to be angry that crime is out of control. Yes, it is fair to be angry that you cannot sit on your porch at night talking with family or friends because gunshots could ring out at any second. Yes, you have a right to be angry that you worry every time you get into your car to go anywhere after dark, even to church, and you breathe a sigh of relief when you are safely back home, locked inside the prison of your own household.

Words are important. We have to shout and scream that we have had enough and stop accepting the fact that it keeps getting worse. We have a right to demand better. While the homicide rate is at a four-decade low in the United States, The Bahamas has recorded more than 100 murders a year for the last five years and our murder rate is approximately nine times that of the US. In four and a half years of the Progressive Liberal Party government, there have been 547 murders in The Bahamas according to The Tribune’s records.

Voicing anger and demanding change are important but they must be followed by action for no amount of words will stop a bullet or end a gang war once the rivalry is unleashed.

What action is appropriate? The first is change in leadership at the very top. The current situation demands a leader, whether the Minister of National Security or a crime czar, who is not afraid, who has no political ladder to climb and who has one agenda - to clean up. He or she has to pledge the basics - justice must be fair but it must be swift - and stop making excuses.

The second is showering resources, including extra surveillance and undercover agents at those corners or streets designated as hot spots on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis. Crime lights may be uncomfortable to sleep by but they definitely keep neighbourhoods safer.

The third is getting the message out to the public, reports of what is taking place, the stepped up patrols, arrests, searches, the bright lights. The crime czar or leader should make daily reports, to camera. This should not be left to police on the street who are less than comfortable facing a camera crew and stand awkwardly with a group around them. Let the public know if you do the crime, you are going to face the possibility of time. This is a new day and a new approach.

Fourth, set up roadblocks in unannounced locations every day.

Fifth, take the message that you are serious into schools, every officer travelling with an ex-convict or prison trustee talking to students from the fourth grade up about the hellhole and life at Fox Hill.

Sixth, rely on DNA for far more evidence.

Seventh, publish photos of everyone caught red-handed with a gun.

Eighth, step up community policing and police on bicycles. Getting closer to people is the only way to build trust when many are afraid to report a crime. As Safe Bahamas used to say, ‘When everyone’s watching, criminals can’t hide’.

Ninth, create a new highly secure evidence area that requires voice recognition and other checks for guns and ammo that is seized. The rent-a-gun so the crime can’t be traced strategy is thwarting many good efforts.

Tenth, create more citizens’ watches that are given responsibility and authority to clean up abandoned vehicles, buildings that harbour criminal activity and high grasses and weeds that are perfect cover for rape and other crimes to take place.

There are 100 more suggestions and more may follow. There can be no progress without starting somewhere and there will be no quality of life in The Bahamas if we do not start soon. ‘Enough’.