NASSAU, BAHAMAS — A double shooting in Fox Hill last night threatened to tip the country’s homicide count over last year’s count.
According to police, the double shooting took place in the area of Fox Hill Park, and two men were taken to the hospital.
Last year’s count came to rest at 119, and as of yesterday, police had recorded 118 homicides for 2022.
Minister of National Security Wayne Munroe yesterday said that police will continue to crack down on crime through saturated patrols and operations.
“The police track and trend these things, so they have said to me the trends that they see, how to intend to correct them – my job as I see is to provide the police with their resources in terms of apprehension and steps they need to seek to prevent, once persons are caught,” Munroe said.
“We are now working with the courts to seek to expedite that process, then seek to rehabilitate them.”
However, the National security Minister maintained he is satisfied with the apprehension rate seeing that police tend to quickly catch offenders after they would have committed a crime.
He said The Bahamas has managed well with its high apprehension rate compared to other countries, adding the ministry plans to continue to support law enforcement by providing them with the tools needed to carry out operations.
Munroe said: “Saturation patrols have been increased as we are able to give them more resources in terms of manpower and vehicles you’ve seen some cases of persons actually apprehended […] shortly after committing offenses, we will intend to up the number of vehicles we give them.
“We recruiting more police officers we aim to recruit at least two classes a year and so we give them the vehicles, the resources they need to be ever present on the street.”
The Ministry of National Security will also be kicking off a number of youth-centered programs starting next week as the government seeks early intervention in the fight against crime. Munroe said that over the past four years programs were ratcheted down and they are gearing up to change that.
“The interventions used to be targeted at the high schools and we now have to target them at the primary schools because we’ve had a fifteen-year-old charged with murder and so the interventions have to start earlier […] these are our children, we have socialized them to be murderers, we have socialized them to have no regard for life. We have to arrest that development.”
The programs will focus on conflict resolution, anger management, and choice management. Munroe added that they are zeroing in on prevention and ways to beat the challenge of criminals being produced in society.
“The only way that we are going to stop murders is if we stop producing murderers and that is our challenge and there are going to be some programs that have been launched […] and the object of those is to deter youth at risk from that type of behavior.”
Family of All Murder Victims (FOAM) Director, Khandi Gibson said that saving one child at a time and making sure no child is left behind in these programs are key, as many of them struggle with violence in the home.
“A lot of these young men they come from broken homes,” Gibson said.
“Alot of these young men lost their mother, their father their uncle at an early age to violence.”
Gibson added that her NGO has programs for children as young as five years old to teenagers, They assist young people with their homework after school and take them to church.
She said while these are good incentives, organizations also need funding to help them make a greater impact.
“I been wanting to collaborate (with the government) long time but it’s like only a select few was chosen for whatever they doing. I’ve been asking long time, I’m out here.
“[…] the government problem is they are cherry picking. When it comes to crime we can’t watch and spare no spaces.”
She said that crime seminars and symposiums should include the families of murder victims because the children are suffering from the trauma of the violence that they witness in the home and often repeat those actions if they never get help.
”Hurting people, hurt people, it’s because you have hurting children,” Gibson added.
