NASSAU, BAHAMAS — Minister of National Security Wayne Munroe yesterday confirmed that several police officers have been sent to the Turks and Caicos Islands in a joint operation as the neighboring country grapples with a national crisis due to the proliferation of transnational crime.
Munroe was tightlipped over details as the operation was a matter of national security; however, he said a fuller statement would be shared in the coming days.
Assistant Commissioner of Police Kendall Strachan was sworn in as a special constable in Turks and Caicos as part of the special cooperation between the two governments.
Munroe, Commissioner of Police Clayton Fernander, and other senior security stakeholders attended a Caricom meeting of security ministers yesterday.
Munroe told Eyewitness News that one of the main topics discussed by security ministers was the proliferation of firearms throughout the region.
“It would have been said that there are Bahamian officers who have been sworn in as special constables,” he said.
“Their jobs, their functions, their reasons why they are there, are a matter of national security so the most that you can say is yes they would have been sworn in. There are a team of them but that’s as far as we can go.”
A press release on Thursday, from the Ministry of National Security, advised that this doubling-down exercise is a part of “combating emerging national security threats in the region”, which mitigates the influence of external factors on domestic crime.
“We are confident that with these joint security missions between both countries, we can deliver an aggressive and robust counter-offensive against organized crimes impacting both The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos” the statement read.
The announcement was met with heavy criticism from the public on social media platforms.
Attorney General Ryan Pinder responded to criticism in a tweet yesterday.
“With respect to the police officers, as you can appreciate, there are national security concerns that might restrict certain disclosures but needless to say we recognize organized crime is multinational in our region and requires a multinational response.” Pinder said.
TCI Governor Nigel Dakin underscored the country was facing “serious transnational crime” in a communication to the country’s Parliament earlier this week.
According to reports, Dakin marked the escalating crime as a national crisis and pointed to the bolstering of Jamaican gangs in the country after a void was created by the deaths of two local gang bosses.
“For those that criticise the police, here is a reality check, visiting senior UK police officers tell me that there is no county force in the UK – many of them three times the size of our own – that could start to tackle an armed and violent cross-county, let alone transnational threat, of this scale,” Dakin said.
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