In recent weeks, the public has been terrified by news coming in from places like Pinewood Gardens and Yellow Elder Gardens. In one instance a man was allegedly gunned down by police officers. In another, a long standing domestic dispute explodes in a climax of God-awful violence and mayhem. In this instance, a woman is blasted in the face.
In the meantime, the public remembers the time when other places were besieged. The public also remembers those other times when other communities were savaged by both police and their criminal counterparts.
In addition to these dramatic instances of crime running amok, there are those other occasions when criminals in high places pull off one deal after the other. Some of these deals would involve the trade in guns, drugs, other contraband and certain counterfeit goods.
This pattern suggests that The Bahamas is today that kind of place where crime has become endemic, a place where money talks.
When reference is made to the upsurge in crimes against persons and property, the point must also be made that these are sometimes quite devastating.
We take note too that some of the crimes against the person are quite savage, suggesting that some of this nation’s criminals are becoming more and more feral.
Rape and murder are at the top of the list in this bestiary of horror.
In such circumstances, many Bahamians grow desperate. Some grow faint as a consequence of fear, while others decide that they will take the law into their own hands. Of some note in this regard are any number of disturbing indicators of stress and distress in this country of ours.
Indeed no day passes when there is not a report of some outrage or the other. In some instances Bahamians are apparently so distraught that some are becoming suicidal, while others work through their own destructive impulses by way of any number of attacks on each other.
As the bloody beat goes on, the nation’s youth play the part of chorus in this ongoing national tragedy. Making the whole mess even more horrible is the fact that all of this violence is taking place against a backdrop that would depict The Bahamas as a tropical paradise.
The fact, is that we are not alone in this mess.
Today new information is reaching us from Jamaica. It concerns that troubled nation’s spiraling murder rate. One lurid headline proclaims: JA shock at brutal murder.
The horror was encapsulated in one sentence: “Jamaicans have expressed shock and outrage at the murder of four people who were shot dead when gunmen firebombed their house and shot them as they tried to escape.”
The Bahamas and its sister nations in the Caribbean are today reaping a most bitter harvest. Whether reference is to Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad-Tobago, the Bahamas or any other Caribbean country, the story concerning the drugs trade is the same.
As we know, “the problems of crime and the quality of justice have become central issues in public debate and important public policy concerns in a number of Caribbean countries. This problem is perhaps most acute in Jamaica which has acquired an unenviable reputation for having a high rate of violent crime.”
And as Bahamians know all too well, there are Bahamians who -even now- are dealing in drugs. As a necessary corollary, these people are also quite literally selling death.
But while some people are dying, there are others-the drugs dealers- who are apparently going from strength to strength. This is how it is throughout the region.
Sadly and tragically, there are circumstances and situations that demonstrate and illuminate the fact that Caribbean governments are some times quite impotent, often outgunned and out maneuvered by the gangsters with the guns.
Editorial from The Bahamas Journal
