BREAKING NEWS<<<

Breaking News <<< BP is reporting a shooting in the Mckinney Drive area of Carmichael sometime after 7PM. We are told a domestic dispute between a man and his wife resulted in him shooting her in the leg. The incident happened just hours after the Privy Council overturned the death sentence of Maxo Tido. In the Bahamas you can conclude it is possible to murder and get away with it.

MURDER #245 in Pinewood Last Night

BP is reporting at this hour another murder in the Pinewood Gardens area. Murder number 245 occurred when a young man was walking in the area of Mt. Tabor Church shortly after 10pm last night. He was shot in the head by a lone gunman. He was taken to PMH where he later died.

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STATEMENT BY RODNEY MONCUR

The Families of Murder Victims have marched through the streets of Nassau for three years now, calling on the society to pressure the Government, as well as calling on the Government itself, to exercise its duty and hang all murderers as prescribed by law; and to restore the age-old, unwritten but entrenched tradition that persons charged with murder are not granted bail.

In response to the positive support we have received from all sectors of the public and in spite of the detractors, we will continue to march and proclaim our message because the situation is getting worse day by day.

The Bahamas is now in suicide mode. With the murder rate as high as it is at present, with no signs of abating, it is clear that the country is on a sure and unobstructed path to self-destruction. The country is hell-bent on becoming another crime-ridden, failed state in the Caribbean.

The Bahamas is being destabilized. There is no doubt about that. The dramatic rise in crime over the past six months only reflects the unrelenting growth in the total and utter disrespect for the law that has been nurtured in our society for years now. This breakdown in law and order has had and will continue to have long-lasting negative effects on the country.

And once we have descended into the depths of social degradation, where crime rules, it will take generations for this country to be restored.

The whole society is to be blamed for this social collapse that is threatening this nation at this moment, for we, the people, have sat back and have stood aside and allowed the penal system, under the mismanagement of political parties, to be subverted and made a laughingstock.

The penal system, the system of punishment for violent crimes against human life, clearly has been infiltrated by ideas, concepts, philosophies and positions that protect the criminal from punishment and allow him to walk the streets freely to commit more acts of violence, terror and death.

After refusing to hang murderers and after granting bail to droves of suspects charged with murder, how intelligent are we as a people to now be wondering why there is so much murder and violence in the country?

When legal arguments against laws that punish criminals have more influence and impact in judicial deliberations than the actual laws themselves, it ought to be obvious to all that the country is being run foolishly and dangerously.

Unwittingly and by our passive attitude, the whole society is engaging in an anti-tourist campaign, threatening the very life-blood of the modern Bahamian lifestyle. And while there have not been very many acts of violence against tourists, those that have occurred have been given wide publicity abroad.

Already, we do not know how many tourists have decided over the past few years not to visit the Bahamas because of the out-of-control crime situation. We do not know how many travel agents around the world have steered visitors away from the beautiful Bahamas with its uncontrollable and never-ending crime wave.

While Bahamian tourism officials have been measuring incremental increases in tourist arrivals, have they been able to measure incremental decreases in tourist inflows as a result of an international image of the Bahamas as having an inordinate and abnormally high crime rate?

We, the Families of Murder Victims are aware that the tourist markets in the United States and Canada have already come to the conclusion that crime is growing steadily out of control in the Bahamas and that nothing is being done seriously to stop it.

We are aware that the North American market is already sensitized to the deteriorating social situation here in the Bahamas and believe that the criminal justice system cannot be relied upon to bring swift retribution, if ever at all, to those who fall victim to the criminals.

North Americans, being fully aware of the successes that determined politicians have had in reducing the rate of rampant lawlessness and violent crime in some of the most densely populated cities in North America, are well able to judge the seriousness and effectiveness of the fight against crime in this small country of less than a half million residents.

Valuable time is being wasted in Parliament when debate centres around the reasons why criminals commit their acts of violence, rather than focuses on the fact that the laws that are in place to punish criminals are not being enforced; and that in any case, only the petty criminals, by and large, are punished, while the purveyors of violence, fear and death are allowed to go free.

Families of Murder Victims therefore call on Bahamians, from all walks of life, to join us on June 25 2011, when we march through the streets of Nassau once again, to prevent gangsterism from gaining powerful influence in the courts, in political parties and in Parliament.

Families of Murder Victims invite all citizens of the Bahamas to join us on June 25 2011, as we march to stop the spread of wicked and ungodly arguments, perverted principles and vile perspectives in our penal system. Join us in our just struggle to create a society where murderers will no longer be on the streets, out of jail and off the gallows; but rather, off the streets, in jail, and on the gallows.