The recommendations submitted by the public on how best to tackle the country’s crime woes have yielded some positive results, according to the national security minister.

Dr. Bernard Nottage even went a step further to say he has “seen success” from the suggestions.

The first public crime forum, “Operation Ceasefire” was held in August.

Practical suggestions from that event were included in a book and adopted as part of the country’s fight against crime.

There were 52 recommendations in total.

Minister Nottage said while not all the recommendations have come to fruition, the government is trying to all introduced or implemented by the middle of next year.

“I’ve seen success from the crime plan that we have instituted in the sense that we have had a considerable decrease in the number of violent crimes during the last two months,” he said recently.

“I think it’s unrealistic to expect that everybody will be perfect and that we would have no incidents, but I think that the matters have definitely declined. We have seen a marked reduction in fact. We understand that we will continue to have problems and we will continue to find ways on how best to beat them.”

Dr. Nottage’s comments follow four murders in the past week – one on Monday, two on Wednesday and another on Friday.

While the minister did not comment directly about those incidents, he insisted the public continue to help the police with such investigations.

“The public is doing a good job, but more can be done,” he said.

“People are harbouring criminals and harbouring weapons and they should call the police anonymously to come and get them. We are all in this fight together. This is not just a fight for the government. Everyone must assist.”

Officials plan to host additional crime forums in New Providence and the Family Islands.

“We are planning to have a forum for school children in the next week or two and by the end of the year, we will have a talking forum where the heads of the law enforcement agencies are going to be required to talk to the people about what it is they’re going to do to have further reductions in crime – that’s customs, immigration, police, defence force and the prison,” he said.

“There has been a forum in Grand Bahama already and we plan to have several others as well. We want to do this in Abaco, Eleuthera, Exuma, Long Island, Andros so we can get views from Family Islanders as well. There have been no dates fixed as yet, but as soon as we come up with them we will make them available to the press so people can know when and where to go.”