By RICARDO WELLS

Tribune Staff Reporter

rwells@tribunemedia.net

FORMER Deputy Commissioner of Police Marvin Dames yesterday spoke out in support of Police Commissioner Ellison Greenslade and the Royal Bahamas Police Force after a spate of murders in New Providence.

There have been 11 homicides so far this month, according to The Tribune’s records. This comes after a bloody December, which saw 15 homicides, the most of any month in 2016, followed by 13 in November, according to police statistics.

Contending that efforts to reduce crime cannot succeed until a holistic approach is taken toward social ills in the country, Mr Dames said the efforts of law enforcement officers are to be commended because this alone is “keeping us from the brink of crisis”.

“We have failed as a country by putting this problem at the feet of law enforcement with the demand of them controlling a problem that started in our homes, schools, churches and social groupings,” said the recently ratified Free National Movement candidate for Mount Moriah.

“When we look at the news we see the details of incidents that end poorly, but that is just a part of what they go through daily. It doesn’t stop for them. Everyday it is a fight against a problem that we have failed to look at holistically,” he added.

Mr Dames said the reality surrounding 11 homicides committed within a span of 18 days makes one thing clear: “The failures have more to do with society than it does with law enforcement.”

“Look at what happened today,” Mr Dames said referring to a stabbing incident at Government High School. “This didn’t happen because police weren’t there or because they didn’t respond in a timely fashion.

“To say that would be a tragedy in and of itself. We have a situation where we need to address the persons involved because there are personal issues; social issues that have been allowed to fester and now are burning over. How do you expect an officer to predict that and police it? Impossible.

“We can name issues and the problems and say what we feel the causes are. They may be related directly or indirectly to trends, statistics; the things we want to believe.

“But we find ourselves in a serious predicament because we aren’t looking at those involved in these situations and saying, ‘you know what, there is something that pushed that person to do what he did, something is causing that.’

“In this country, we made the mistake of making crime a political issue some years back. I want to caution the public in this time of turmoil not to look at the police and say that they should ramp this up, switch that up.

“We need to come together because social ills are not solely a police responsibility. We can’t put the kind of pressure on police to solve this problem. What we are seeing is the results of decades of problems which extend from a plethora of issues,” Mr Dames added.

“To keep it honest, we can give officers all the resources in the world, but that is not going to end what we see on our streets, it’s like police are shooting in the dark because you cannot patrol and police social issues.”

On Wednesday, Commissioner Greenslade called the country’s murder count so far this month a “disgrace”, but stressed that many of the country’s recent killings stem from feuds over drugs and relationships.

The commissioner said “prolific serial offenders” cannot remain “free in our communities to continue to create fear” and possibly commit more serious crimes, as he urged family members, friends and associates of serial criminals to “turn them into police” before they become targets.

Responding to questions over Commissioner Greenslade’s hard stance, Mr Dames applauded his former boss, stating that the approach should act as the first in a series of “get it right” moments needed in the country.

“Let’s be clear, we need acts like that to get it right as we face this turmoil,” he said.

“We need to use every arm of our society, pull all the force in line and make a holistic push to improve the state of affairs. We cannot continue to look at crime through a single lens . . . We have to end the act of making crime political because the government has the right to engage everyone to fix this.

“I served in the police force, and I praise those officers because I know what they are going through. But we cannot look to them for solutions. We can talk about models and strategies until we are blue in the face. We need to rebuild our people - start with that.”