SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

The Ba­hami­an gov­ern­ment has tak­en a de­ci­sion to pro­vide gang mem­bers with em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties to com­bat ris­ing crime in com­mu­ni­ties.

The an­nounce­ment was made by Ba­hamas Prime Min­is­ter Cari­com chair Philip Davis at the end of last week’s two-day day Crime Sym­po­sium in Port-of-Spain.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence, Davis said they have rolled out an ini­tia­tive where they have asked for­mer gang lead­ers/mem­bers to reach out to cur­rent “gang mem­bers to lay down their arms and try to bro­ker” peace among their ri­vals. This, he said, has been proven to be help­ful.

“One of the things that we al­so find is that a num­ber of the gang mem­bers are un­em­ployed. And so, we are about to ini­ti­ate a pro­gramme where we are go­ing to en­gage them in work that they can do,” David said.

He said the jobs of­fered will be to clean a par­tic­u­lar com­mu­ni­ty for a 6-8-week pe­ri­od. Their plan is to keep the gang mem­bers busy.

“You know idle hands is the tool of the dev­il,” he said.

Through the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Davis said they are try­ing to make ear­ly in­ter­ven­tions in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools, where some stu­dents are be­ing re­cruit­ed by gang mem­bers.

Davis said the gov­ern­ment will go all out to pro­tect these chil­dren from falling in­to bad com­pa­ny or crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties by hav­ing af­ter-school pro­grammes that will teach them about mak­ing the right choic­es.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Clay­ton Fer­nan­der told the Sun­day Guardian the gang mem­bers will be pro­vid­ed with jobs in the com­mu­ni­ties they re­side. These jobs in­clude clean­ing aban­doned lots, streets, drains and homes of the el­der­ly.

Fer­nan­der said the po­lice ser­vice was still work­ing out the lo­gis­tics for this crime-fight­ing mea­sure.

Ba­hamas has five ac­tive gangs, he said.

“We are look­ing at a week­ly salary for the men.”

Each gang mem­ber, he said, can pock­et a min­i­mum wage of $260 week­ly.

“This is a start,” Fer­nan­der said, adding their salaries would be far less than what they earn as a gang mem­ber.

“It’s all about get­ting them to earn their mon­ey the le­gal way and turn­ing their lives around.”

The po­lice, Fer­nan­der said, al­so in­tend to put out 100 ve­hi­cles in crime hotspots ar­eas.

“We have al­ready re­ceived some of the ve­hi­cles to start this ini­tia­tive. When you sat­u­rate an area with po­lice and ve­hi­cles, crime goes down. The crim­i­nals flee. That is our in­ten­tion...to bring the ris­ing lev­els of crime on a down­ward trend.”

Fer­nan­der said each hotspot will have sev­en ve­hi­cles pa­trolling around the clock, with three po­lice of­fi­cers be­ing as­signed to one ve­hi­cle.