A man-child has been lost in the whirlwind and a community mourns his passage from time into eternity. As he left, his neighbours, family and friends tried to find answers to any number of puzzling questions, all of which circled back upon their trail with the one word which troubles so many many of us when a youth dies. The question is why?
Even now as Christians worldwide get set to celebrate the birth of the Christ-child, they ask themselves why there must be so much suffering, so much pain and so much sorrow. Why after all these years of tears and ashes on the tongue, is truth still crucified? Why, in the name of God, did Jermaine Alexander Mackey have to die as he did last Friday night?
And, please tell me why so many stupid Bahamians care more for police cars and fire engines than they care for the people on Kemp Road who had the living heart blown out of their community last Friday night.
In the name of God, someone please tell me why.
Harriet Cooper has lost a grandson. Her child has lost a son. And, he – in – turn is being mourned by an infant daughter. Jermaine Alexander Mackey is the name of the man who was destroyed last Friday night. He was 27 years old. He died in a moment when life still held for him near infinite possibility.
According to a number of eye witness accounts he was brought down by a blaze of gunfire directed his way by members of the Royal Bahamas Police Force. While I have no way of saying what went down and why police officers thought they had to respond as they did to this unarmed black man, I know one thing for sure, which is that the police did not win for themselves any new friends on Kemp Road. Now, while this matter is subject to further inquiry by a coroner’s jury, nothing prevents people like me from saying that something must be wrong, rotten and nasty when men like Jermaine Alexander Mackey could end up dead at the hands of other black men, some of them his peers.
And, for sure, I can say, too, that Police Commissioner Paul Farquharson and the fine and decent men who serve with him on the force should do everything in their power to see to it that their life’s work is not destroyed by a small number of out of control brutes in uniform.
In the specific instance of the circumstances surrounding the killing of Jermaine Mackey, a
ﾠﾠﾠnumber of eye witness accounts paint a picture of brutality and horror which – if true – suggest that the forces of Good and Evil are in pitched battle over the soul of The Royal Bahamas Police Force.
One woman, one report notes, noticed a navy blue police car and reports that the police came out of the navy blue car and started to walk behind Jermaine Alexander Mackey. He responded to them and told them ‘I don’t have anything”. What happened afterwards was crucial. As the eye witness reports: “I don’t know if they said anything else – all I saw was when an officer hop out the car and reach for his gun. JAM mussie get scared because he ran and the police them run after him shooting off. They ran in the back of the house and he (the police officer) fired a shot at him.”
The result of the shooting was simple and direct: Jermaine Alexander Mackey was damaged beyond repair. His grandfather describes the matter this way: “Jermaine was laying there like an animal. He had a hole in his chest that looked like cut meat or something.” As Cynthia “Mother” Pratt might remonstrate: “Great God From Zion, what manner of beast could do this to one of God’s precious creatures”.
But, all this aside, the peace of this blessed Advent Season has already been marred by the taste of blood, the stench of gunfire and the gaping hole in Jermaine Mackey’s chest.
However, while all of this is bad enough, what is worse is that a number of Bahamians still do not seem to appreciate the fact that there can never be peace or tranquillity in this country so long as people like Jermaine Alexander Mackey are not treated with the respect they deserve.
I cannot believe and will never accept it that whatever happened last Friday night would have ever been sanctioned or condoned by decent and law abiding people like Paul Farquharson and the decent and law abiding officers who work with him.
What ever happened last Friday night must have been the result of some kind of monstrous aberration. In time – as we all know – a coroner’s court will tell us what we need to know. Whenever that jury is empanelled, I will be there – God willing – to see the faces of the men who were there when Jermaine Alexander Mackey was gunned down and his remains left behind the Vintage Brotherhood Bar on Kemp Road.
Rough Cut, The Bahama Journal
