The Bahamas: It's Pivotal Moment

Sidney Sweeting, DDS

I have become aware of a disturbing number of Bahamians who who have stated that they now intend to take matters into their own hands as far as crime is concerned. Their patience has been exhausted and they feel that enough is enough. Just this week while in line at a bank a businessman was saying that he was robbed by two armed gunmen and he went looking for them. He caught one and he and a friend gave him a thorough beating and dropped him off at a police station with a warning that if there is a next time he will kill him. That is just one example.

Calling the police to have them show up and write out a laborious report to stick on a shelf is a waste of time. Perhaps we can be charitable and say that they are burdened with too much work or frustrated from catching the same criminals that they caught the year before and the year before that and the courts have decided that they should be out on bail or their sentence should be shortened or they don't have room at the prison, or whatever.

It is bad enough that the God-fearing, law-abiding citizens have to live behind bars with surveillance cameras and alarm systems while the prisoners are walking through the revolving doors at the prison but now that the tourists are being targeted on a frequent basis we have to wonder why the US Embassy has not placed the Bahamas on its no travel advisory. They must have the proverbial "patience of Job."

Time is short, very short. Either our politicians stop the finger pointing, talking nonsense and start taking a sincere interest in curbing crime by working together as Bahamians instead of looking to the next election there will be nothing left for anyone to govern.