by Craig Butler
Within the space of five days two young men had their lives stubbed out for nothing at all. I have to ask myself 'why?' And honestly I don’t have an answer. Is life now so cheap that we take it without a second thought?
Our young men are angry and their inability to control their emotions causes them to act impulsively. This results many times in consequences that could easily have been avoided had someone stopped to think, but more likely than not has ended in tragedy for two families.
Always remember it is not only the victim’s family that are grieving after suffering the loss of one dear to them, but the perpetrator's family have to endure the shame of it all and the fact that their child will now be dragged before the courts to face justice and on each occasion they will ponder the question to which there is no answer...What if?
I have spoken about this so many times that I am sounding like a stuck record, but something has to be done and accordingly I will have to continue to highlight the problem until we attempt to address it.
Jeff Lloyd, the host of a popular radio talk show, is the director of a Catholic Church-sponsored remedial youth programme called YEAST, which is involved in a joint venture with the National Youth Service Restorative Programme. In June this programme graduated 41 boys after nine months of intensive training on Andros. In October another 100 of our misguided delinquent youth (males between 12 and 19) will be enrolled in the YEAST programme.
This is not a novel idea, but it is one that has produced positive results. The strong training in a regimented military-type format allows for the tough love that these young men need, and provides a structured system to encourage them to conform.
Some time ago I called for the government to establish a national school of excellence on one of the out islands where the best of the best would be selected to attend. The school would be endowed by private contributions and public seed money, and would give young people something to strive for and help raise the level of educational achievement.
Similarly, I believe that a full national programme to recapture our wayward youth - both male and female - is needed, akin to what is now taking place in Andros. Let us engage the services of some retired drill sergeants from the US and British armed services and let them help to get our kids in shape. Please don’t think that I am excluding the services of our very own former Defence Force officers - I’m not. We need to secure the services of at least two former military personnel for each and every public school.
How best to deploy them would need to be discussed, but I feel that their experience could be helpful in terms of selecting the more vulnerable at-risk students who can be engaged in a more regimented programme inside the schools that can better equip them to deal with their emotions and anger.
I am reminded of the words from a Kenny Rodgers song: “The coward of the County” that came out many years ago. It makes me stop and think if more of our children would just walk away from a tense situation they would live to see another day. That is not the prevailing thought however and many feel as though to leave allows others to disrespect them and that obviously is not acceptable.
Ev'ryone considered him the coward of the county.
He'd never stood one single time to prove the county wrong.
His mama named him Tommy, the folks just called him yellow,
But something always told me they were reading Tommy wrong.
He was only ten years old when his daddy died in prison.
I looked after Tommy 'cause he was my brother's son.
I still recall the final words my brother said to Tommy:
'Son, my life is over, but yours is just begun.
Promise me, son, not to do the things I've done.
Walk away from trouble if you can.
It won't mean you're weak if you turn the other cheek.
I hope you're old enough to understand:
Son, you don't have to fight to be a man.'
POLICE OFFICERS.
When we think of the police we envision individuals of integrity who respect the law and are trained to fight crime.
No system or group is perfect and accordingly there will always be some bad apples that bring shame on all the other hard-working people. That is the case with Corporal Tarquin Dion Kelly and Constable Jonathan Hall, both residents of Johnson Road who were arraigned before the chief magistrate last week on charges of armed robbery, possession of an unlicensed firearm and receiving stolen goods.
These two men, not wanting to be embarrassed any further hid their faces in their shirts so their picture wouldn’t appear in the daily newspapers. However, I give kudos to Commissioner Farquharson decision to order the publication of their photos.
Yes, the law says that a person is innocent until proven guilty and I an sure that these men will receive their day in court. However, the shame that they have bought upon themselves and the police force and the erosion of the trust that the public has in our police officers warrants the publication of their pictures.
Don’t think for one minute that this is a unique situation in the Bahamas. In some places the police are the main vessels of criminality. Look at the recent headlines about Broward County Sheriff Ken Jenne being under investigation for fraud. If that be the case a whole life’s work would have been eroded.
1. No 'nigga' is going to willingly enroll in something called YEAST. Soon as his boys hear bout that he's gonna be on the receiving end of EVERY possible joke involving yeast infections.
2. Yeast is trying to fix what's broken. It's not trying to prevent the problem. Need to get to the kids before they get into problems.
3. The national school of excellence is a superb idea. According to another article on this site GHS used to be just that. The former PM even states in his bio on the plp web-site that not being able to maintain the high standards of GHS and being kicked out was the turning point of his life and made him determined to succeed in life.
There is a reason why (at least in other countries) white-collar criminals aren't sent to the same prisons as hard-core violent criminals. Sending some children to certain public and even private schools is as bad an idea as sending a skinny, pale computer hacker to a maximum security prison where the pressure to conform to criminal life on the inside is 20x the pressure to conform to society on the outside. Sadly, in our case and in the U.S. the culture of our youth glamorises criminal behavoiur and in some americans have told me that in certain parts of certain cities you aren't considered a man until you've spent at least a couple months in jail.
4. What does Her Majesty's Prison consider 'rehabilitation'. I've got this guy who does odd jobs for me every now and then. He's been in and out of prison non-stop since his teens. It obviously did _nothing_ to help make him a better person.
Posted by: anonymous | July 16, 2007 at 10:21 AM
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/crime/homicidemap/?source=local_news
I really wish one of our newspapers or somebody would get their hands on the reports and put something like this together.
Age, Race, Gender, Cause of Death, Day of the Week, Name, Place, Date, and a MAP of where the murder took place. Also they have informative articles about every murder and update some of them with info about the court cases of the murderers.
The Bahamian public needs it's own community run Homicide Report.
Posted by: thinsoldier | August 14, 2007 at 02:54 PM