The Tribune

 By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

POLICE are investigating another murder after a man was shot dead Saturday morning.

According to a police report, around 4am Saturday three men left a nightclub at a shopping complex on East Street South in a self-drive vehicle when occupants of a gold-coloured car pulled alongside them and fired several shots before speeding off. The men drove to the hospital where one of them died of his injuries and another was treated and discharged.

The third man was not injured, police said.

This killing pushed the country’s murder count to 64 for the year, according to The Tribune’s records.

It also comes as the Royal Bahamas Police Force (RBPF) has sought to intensify its efforts to crack down on law-breaking behaviour.

In addition to increased road patrols in recent weeks, police conducted a “major operation” throughout New Providence Saturday night that resulted in the arrest of 31 people and the confiscation of a handgun, ammunition and drugs.

National Security Minister Marvin Dames has said that increased visibility of police officers and patrols of crime hotspots are a part of the new administration’s short-term efforts to reduce the crime rate. Longer-term solutions will require an analysis of law enforcement institutions and the fine-tuning of them where necessary, he recently said.

“When we entered into office a few weeks ago we started an aggressive plan of trying to assess where it is we are at,” he told the press last week. “Just this morning (Wednesday) prior to going into Parliament I spent the morning with the commissioner and his crime team just having them share with me their strategy and how does that mesh with our policy of visibility, police enforcement and ensuring Bahamians in our communities are safe. We spent some time looking at the statistics for this year, looking critically at where these incidents are occurring, time of day, day of week, and getting an understanding from the commissioner and his team as to their role in ensuring that we do more to reduce the level of crime.

“Everyone says it’s not a police responsibility, not totally a police responsibility, the reduction of crime. But our government now is looking at some of the current existing programmes and trying to see whether they are relevant and if they are not relevant we are looking at introducing some new programmes that can be relevant and maybe fine-tuning the existing programmes to ensure that they meet the needs of the people of this country.

“We have begun introducing some short-term measures that hopefully will begin reaping some positive results. Still, those long-term measures that will help bring the crime to a manageable place are important.”

Asked to elaborate on the short-term measures being employed, Mr Dames stressed the importance of police visibility and patrol of crime hotspots.

“You will begin to see a change coming after my meetings,” he said. “We have some fixing to do in all of these (law enforcement) organisations. It won’t be overnight. We need to determine what is the establishment of all of these organisations.”

Anyone with information on this latest homicide is asked to call police at 919, 502-9991 or Crime Stoppers at 328-TIPS.