Police officials have denied allegations that officers attached to the Royal Bahamas Police Force were among the 23 individuals taken into custody after being found in a house suspected of illegal gambling.
A source with close connections to the force claimed on Tuesday that some officers were detained during a raid on a suspected numbers racket in the Grove last week.
Police press liaison officer Inspector Walter Evans said 23 Haitians were rounded up in the raids and that around $40,000 in cash and gambling paraphernalia were confiscated.
However, speaking with The Tribune yesterday, Assistant Commissioner Reginald Ferguson said that he was unaware of any officers being detained during the operation.
“If any police officers were arrested in that matter, I would have known, and I didn’t hear that we locked up any police, officers in this raid,” Mr Ferguson said.
“However,” he said, “if officers are implicated and these things do happen – they would be charged like everybody else. If it is straight forward contravention of the Gaming Lottery Act, they would be subject to the same thing like anybody else.”
All of the confiscated material, according to Assistant Commissioner Ferguson, has been secured by police to be used as an exhibit against the gambiing house owners when the case goes to court.
Addressing the status of the persons apprehended during the raid, an official from the Immigration Department said that of the 23 Haitians arrested, only four were illegal, and those four were being held at the detention centre on Carmichael Road The others, he said, were charged by the police and granted bail.
The raid on the Grove establishment was a part of a police initiative called “Operation Quiet Storm”, which seeks to focus on and address criminal activities within the community, And whereas police officials say that the gambling establishment was targeted because it was operating in contravention. of the country’s gambling laws, sources claim that the raid was conducted after police received information that the operation may have had financial ties to an illegal Haitian smuggling rink in the Bahamas.
In response to these allegations, Inspector Evans denied that the establishment was targeted for any reason other than the fact that it was operating in contravention of the law.
By MARK HUMES, The Tribune
