State Minister for National Security Keith Bell said the government expects that the murder rate in The Bahamas will continue to decrease.
Last month, there were no murders recorded in The Bahamas.
Many senior police officials have credited the Commissioner’s policing plan as well as greater involvement from the community at large.
While Bell said that he does not want to “jinx” it, he does expect the trend to continue.
“It’s a collaborative effort and a combination of a number of things we’ll continue to look at and address. In our charter for governance there is a prevention component, detection component, prosecution component and there is a rehabilitation component,” he said.
“I don’t care what any other party says the reality is any crime strategy rests on those four broad pillars. As far as the prosecution pillar, if you’ve noticed we been having a lot of homicide convictions and more cases are being tried very quickly. For the first time in our history we have tried seven cases in a year, it has never happened before.”
“It will take time to rollout, there have been some hiccups, there have been some adjustments to policy but it’s going to work eventually.
Mr. Bell said there has to be continuity and it has to be sustained.
In recent months, local police heads have been locked in several conferences with their international counterparts Minister Bell said it’s these types of brainstorming sessions that has and will continue to help curb crime.
“Don’t forget you have domestic crime, which is local crime the armed robberies, homicides etc. Then you have international crimes such as money laundering, fraud, terrorism, major drug trafficking, illegal smuggling all these different vices that come through our country.
“So you have international policing bodies such as INTERPOL to ensure that persons who may be on the terrorism watch list cant attack or set up cells in vulnerable countries.
“And they keep up with modern trends in crime, so all this helps,” Mr. Bell said.
The Free National Movement has been harshly critical of the way the governing party has addressed crime, charging that it is full of empty promises and false rhetoric to that Mr. Bell said the FNM is simply pandering in an effort to deflect the attention from its ongoing infighting.
