The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

FREE National Movement Leader Dr Hubert Minnis called the Christie administration “tone deaf” in its response to crime yesterday after the past few days of violence.

The country recorded three murders and several other serious incidents of violent crime on Sunday and Monday, one of the bloodiest periods in the country in a year where homicides have trended downward.

Dr Minnis said: “A rash of murders over the weekend. Churches being robbed. Bahamians scared to go out due to rumours of retribution killings. Yet this PLP government feels that it’s time to celebrate. As people live in fear we have a government patting itself on the back that the country’s murder rate has not set another record as happened in the previous three years.

“What a dubious distinction to celebrate and it only goes to show just how ‘tone deaf’ this outgoing PLP government is. In fact it was Minister (of National Security Dr Bernard) Nottage, earlier this year, who declared and celebrated what he called a ‘crime reduction’ as Bahamians were literally being killed in the streets and foreign governments were issuing travel warnings due to our crime epidemic. Now it’s Minister (of Tourism Obie) Wilchcombe’s turn as he applauds Minister Nottage’s work, all but ignoring that it was under this government that crime has been rampant and the Bahamas has witnessed record setting murder rates year after year. “Yet for the PLP, not setting another horrifying record this year is cause to celebrate. The fact is that the record smashing 500 plus murders in four and a half years is a shameful record of PLP failure in the serious business of protecting our people from murderous criminals.”

The violent crime rate in the country began to ascend under the previous Ingraham administration. After years of triple-digit murder figures, the country is on pace to record below 100 murders for the first time in years.

The country has averaged about eight murders a month this year, with the best month being July when there were no murders.

There have been 90 homicides this year, according to The Tribune’s records, as opposed to the 133 homicides that were recorded by this time last year.

However, the PLP made crime an election issue while it was in opposition, erecting signs in popular areas which read that there had been more than 490 murders under the previous Ingraham administration. More than 500 homicides have been recorded since the PLP took office in May 2012, with six more months left in this current term.

On Tuesday, Mr Wilchcombe told reporters that the government’s work, along with the efforts of the Royal Bahamas Police Force, prompted results in the crime fight.

“Because of the intensive work done by the minister responsible for national security together with the respective leaders of the Royal Bahamas Defence Force (RBDF) and the Royal Bahamas Police Force (RBPF), we have seen some results in the country,” Mr Wilchcombe said.

“... There is much more work to be done but we have seen progress.”

In response, Dr Minnis countered: “What does such PLP ‘celebration’ say to the mother who had to bury her son, or the child that will never see her mother again, because they were victims of the murder epidemic in the past several years. To the PLP these said events may just be numbers in their crime statistics, but they are not: they are people, families, Bahamians who have had their lives tragically altered by these senseless killings in our communities. The people have not felt safe for years as this government failed to keep their promise to keep our streets safe. The truth? The murder rate has hit record highs year after year, sexual predators are targeting women at an alarming rate, and this Government has spent more time trying to convince everyone that things are fine, as opposed to implementing a plan to make our communities safe.”

A woman was killed and two people, a woman and a man, were hospitalised following a drive by shooting at the Sand Trap off West Bay Street around 8pm on Monday, capping off two days of violence.

On Monday morning, a 21-year-old man was shot in the head during an argument outside a nightclub shortly after midnight on Arundel Street.

And a 52-year-old father of three and owner of the popular downtown nightspot Via Caffe was shot dead and his bullet-riddled body found slumped in a black Mercedes Benz in the parking lot east of the Nassau Sailing Club on the Montagu foreshore around 7.30am on Sunday.