Former Assistant Commissioner of Police Paul Thompson is urging the government to interrogate illegal migrants as a means to gain information to help identify and break the pattern of human smuggling.
Mr. Thompson said: “At least you should be able to find out who the captain is! We have to interrogate the people and find out how much money they paid, who they paid, when they paid, who they are coming here to, and is there someone here who was going to meet you and take care of you? All of that information we should try to get from those people when they are arrested. Don’t just take them to the Detention Centre. That kind of interrogation could take weeks.”
Mr Thompson said the police should thoroughly question migrants and should be trying to identify people in Haiti who are making money by facilitating human smuggling trips into the Bahamas.
The FBI determined the route of human smugglers coming from Brazil through the Bahamas, and on to Miami, so too could the RBPF employ such police work to bust illegal migration.
“They should be fingerprinted and photographed and a file kept. If they came back you can identify them when they come back. They might be coming back with a different name but you can identify them with their prints,” he said.
Regarding the trafficking of guns in and through the Bahamas, Mr Thompson suggested the government offer financial rewards for information.
“When last have you saw anything in the papers about someone being charged and convicted in the gun court? I thought the gun court would have been there to expedite cases of arrest for guns. But we are getting long adjournments,” he said.
Mr. Thompson was photographed for The Bahamian Project. Read the blog on Paul Thompson…
