by Andrew Allen
The Ministry of Tourism and Royal Bahamas Police Force are to be commended for their joint initiative in the policing of tourist areas of New Providence and Paradise Island.
The announcement that a new unit is to be created specifically to deal with crimes against tourists could not come at a more critical time, as the level of crime in general (including in resort areas) seems to be going through one of its customary spikes.
Obviously someone in the ministry has come to realise that we stand to lose whatever advantage is to be derived from the billions invested to date in our tourism plant if we ever get to the point that visitors do not feel safe in The Bahamas.
That point came a little closer last summer when British television gave huge coverage to the death of a British toddler some years ago at the hands of a Bahamian party boat operator. It also comes closer with each robbery of a tourist in our main resort areas.
If we are to avoid the kind of reputation that has cost other countries (like Jamaica) so much in lost earnings over the years, now is indeed the time to make a wise investment in the prevention of crimes against tourists in particular.
The Cable Beach area has long been plagued by criminals who purposefully target New Providence’s single biggest concentration of resorts in order to sell illegal drugs to tourists. On any given night, a local who happens to be dressed like a ‘tourist’ and walking the length of the main strip is bound to be approached by shady characters who drive up and down the resort area asking tourists what they are looking for.
It would be very easy for the police to simply station undercover officers in the area for the purpose of arresting a few of the perpetrators. While there is no chance of arresting all of the perpetrators, the effect of just a few arrests on the atmosphere of impunity that now prevails would be enormous.
Cable Beach has also recently experienced a hike in the level of robberies being perpetrated against both locals and tourists. This trend is in fact nothing new. Four years ago, in one of the most public and brightly lit parts of Cable Beach, this columnist was approached by two tourists who had just been robbed by the occupants of a car that had been cruising alongside them for some time. The police were slow in arriving and, given the generic nature of the description provided, stood no reasonable chance of apprehending the culprits.
In combating crimes of this kind, what is most important is not just apprehending offenders and placing them before the courts, but changing the whole atmosphere in which criminal behaviour is tolerated.
In the 1990’s, the city of New York experienced a sustained decrease in most of the major categories of crime, particularly those against the person. While many factors help to explain the trend (among them, the maturing of the notorious “baby boomer” generation), much of the credit belongs with the New York Police Department. In that decade, the department instituted a proactive policing initiative that concentrated not only on the detection of crime, but on the whole atmosphere of neglect and impunity that sustained an unacceptably large criminal culture.
People who just ‘bent’ the law (by, for instance, engaging in staged street-side card games in which they cheated gullible members of the public) were now literally harassed off the streets, while open but ‘victimless’ activities like sexual solicitation by prostitutes were no longer tolerated. Police authorities even went so far as to remove graffiti from walls (and prosecute the artists) in the belief that the atmosphere of general neglect and ‘license’ was a large part of the crime problem for which the city had become famous. They were proved right.
It is clear from the Bahamian police’s own study that what was wrong with New York up until the mid ‘90’s is wrong with resort areas of The Bahamas today. Unlicensed Jet Ski and boat operators ply their trade in open view of authorities, hawkers (many of them non-Bahamian) harass tourists with dodgy wares right in front of other locals.
While few of these activities would be worth prosecuting through an already overloaded criminal justice system, they all contribute to an atmosphere of ‘looseness’ that attracts the criminal element and even provides a cover for it. Now that the new police unit is a reality, it remains to be seen just how effectively it combats the whole atmosphere of laxness and petty criminality that exists in our resort areas.
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