This might explain – in part at least – some of those situations where innocent citizens find themselves [in street parlance] in the wrong place at the wrong time.
While this is no excuse for negligence, cruelty or venality, it surely begins that process of putting a human face on some of the tragedies that can befall a people when crime and the fear it spawns reaches such a level.
Indeed, information coming in suggests that crime is on the upsurge internationally, driven by the same forces that have led to making it possible for the whole wide world to be connected.
And for sure, the whole wide world is by the minute becoming more and more interconnected. As this interconnectedness continues apace, the criminally-minded have sought to cash in.
It therefore follows that no one police constabulary is able to control their own little piece of national turf. Put simply, policing anywhere must become more and more reliant on policing elsewhere. Evidently, the smaller and weaker the country, the greater must be its reliance on others for help in these brutal times.
Regrettably, some of our fellow-Bahamians seem to be living in some kind of never-land reverie; a state of affairs where they apparently live blissfully unaware that there is a larger world to the north of the Nassau Harbour.
Evidently, these types are as lost when they turn their limited sights to east, west or south – there nothing matters beyond this country porous border.
This is clearly no way to go with matters such as these that matter so very much to so very many Bahamians and their Caribbean brothers and sisters.
One such matter that should be of concern to all Bahamians and others in the region has to do with the policing of all these islands, rocks, cays.
We need help.
Indeed, even the mighty United States of America now understands that it must for its own protection work with others. So today we note some information coming in from the Washington Post [as written by Carrie Johnson, Washington Post Staff Writer]. This information is germane to matters concerning the need for police around the world to cooperate in the world fight against crime.
As Johnson notes, "The Obama administration, intensifying its efforts to defuse an explosion of international organized crime, has dispatched a senior Justice Department official to the Far East this week for meetings with foreign counterparts on the issue.
"Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden will meet Monday with justice ministers from dozens of countries at the Interpol General Assembly in Singapore, where they will discuss ways to neutralize criminal enterprises that target cyberspace, financial institutions and energy markets.
"We face enormously powerful, well-resourced criminal organizations that are not entirely located or even principally located in the United States, that are able to take advantage of weaker government structures than our own . . . but the harm is felt here," Ogden said in an interview, emphasizing the importance of tight partnerships with foreign counterparts.
"In September, the Justice Department inspector general issued a report urging U.S. officials to reinvigorate their affiliation with Interpol…"
Yet again, as Johnson notes, "Justice Department officials recently named Timothy A. Williams, a longtime U.S. Marshals Service employee, as director of the U.S. National Central Bureau, the American offshoot of Interpol."
Here note well that we all live in a world that is in the throes of change.
As change sets in, what now occasions discussion concerns the part that the United States of America will play in world where there are other key players, nations like Brazil, Russia, India and especially China.
And for sure, reference must also be made to an emergent Europe.
This is that great system that also contains small island developing states such as the Bahamas, its neighbours in the region and other such fly-specks of empire located around the world.
Some of these depend – like the Bahamas – on tourism and banking.
We also note that, granted its proximity to the United States of America, its configuration and population and history, the Bahamas is a smuggler’s paradise.
This archipelago with its myriad of islands, rocks, cays and coves is seemingly tailor-made for bandits who would smuggle anything into the United States of America. But even while all this might be so, the fact remains that this region also happens to sit on what the United States describes as its third border.
As such, it necessarily follows that the United States of America must – as a matter of the most urgent priority – see to the defense of this border.
