The public is reminded that a special Court of Inquiry has been appointed to investigate the circumstances, conditions and challenges that might have contributed to the deadly breakout at Her Majesty’s Prison on Tuesday, January 17, 2006.
That special court has completed its work.
We remind our readers that during the prison breakout, Prison Officer Corporal Dion Bowles, 38, died. His colleagues Prison Officers Kenneth Sweeting and David Armbrister were wounded and are receiving medical care.
Today, the beat goes on with no one so far formally charged with the murder of the prison officer.
There was a spate of stories about the prisoners who escaped and as to how they were all eventually dealt with. One was killed and two others -allegedly- were savagely beaten. These men are believed to be the two captured inmates Forrester Bowe, 29 and Barry Parcoi, 42.
As we know, Bowe is a convicted murderer whose appeal was before the Privy Council in London. This was only the latest escape attempt by Parcoi, a convicted rapist who slipped out of the prison last year and was later apprehended in Andros.
This matter has attracted political attention.
In this regard, the Leader of the Opposition, the Rt. Hon. Hubert A. Ingraham has said that he would expect that a coroner’s inquest would be conducted into the two deaths that resulted from the prison break and that the police and attorney general would determine what further action might be pursued.
All of this is taking place a certain macabre backdrop.
Today, Neil Brown -prison inmate- is dead.
Today, Dion Bowles -prison overseer- is also dead.
And today, the mortal remains of both men have been buried. Yet no one has been brought to justice.
Today an attentive and increasing more discerning public wants to know who did what and why whatever they did left these two men dead and a prison in massive uproar.
We, too, want to know the answer to the ‘what’s going’ on question.
In a sense then there are questions to be answered in the aftermath of the furious passage of two Bahamian men from time to eternity.
That one of them happened to have been a prisoner and the other a prison overseer is of no material difference to us. Their deaths serve to demonstrate some of the pathos in power that is represented in the prison experience. How they met their fate may now be subject to the findings of a Coroner’s Court.
We are absolutely convinced that such a court should be set up as quickly as possible. This is so because there is a pressing need for the authorities to get to the bottom of this matter, sooner rather than later.
Were we to make the obvious point that the public’s attention span is short, would be tantamount to saying practically nothing that really matters.
Take for example, those occasions when the public is promised a full report on this or that incident and when thereafter next to nothing is ever reported. And then there happens to be another spectacular incident and the public is promised another full report.
Time and time again, the same kind of thing happens where the public seemingly forgets. Sadly, the authorities sometimes believe that the public has in fact forgotten.
Well, these same ‘authorities’ may be dead wrong.
We are quite convinced that the discerning public is never as apathetic as some of the power brokers might wish to believe. As they dither and dawdle, that public is watching. And sometimes, that public does not like or appreciate what it is getting.
A case in point involves how the recent prison breakout has been handled. There are Bahamians who are today quite convinced that some thing is not quite right with how this tragic incident is being treated.
They want answers and they want those answers now.
At this juncture, there is no telling when their thirst for information will be satisfied. All we can hear is that there has been one report or the other that has been submitted for scrutiny and that at some point in the indefinite future, a report will be made public.
We are never impressed with this kind of specious double-talk. Like others in this community, we too need answers. So do our readers and other members in that group we dub ‘attentive Bahamians’.
Editorial from The Bahama Journal
