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Greenslade Offended by Louis Bacon Comments

Police Commissioner Ellison Greenslade

In a rambling advertisement that was published as a letter to the people of The Bahamas, Lyford Cay billionaire Louis Bacon tried to explain his reasoning behind the formation of his Clifton Coalition.

But Bacon’s discourse degraded more into a tirade against Peter Nygard, than anything to do with the environment.

In one paragraph, Mr Bacon referred to a 2010 police search of his home as a “terrorist raid.”

Mr Bacon wrote: “The police’s terrorist raid of my home was a seriously low ebb in my wife’s and my commitment to the Bahamas.”

However, embattled Police Commissioner Ellison Greenslade said his officers cannot be referred to as terrorists, when they were merely discharging their duties.

Louis Bacon

Calling Mr Bacon’s comments rude and disrespectful, Mr Greenslade suggested such language has “national security implications”.

“Police officers cannot be referred to as terrorists – those are dangerous words,” said Greenslade.

But were the police really just “discharging their duties”, or was there some political interference that had rogue police officers acting in a manner unbecoming of the force?

Police rounded up the household help, allegedly treating them as potential criminals, before consfiscating some industrial speakers from Mr Bacon’s garage. But realizing their mistake, they returned the speakers less than an hour later.  There were no charges filed as a result of the raid, which turned out to be unneccessary and even a bit extreme.

Saying he was “very bothered by those comments”, the commissioner said that he will speak to National Security Minister Bernard Nottage – and “as necessary”, Prime Minister Perry Christie – over the matter.

Greenslade went on… and on, talking about himself in third person as he sometimes does, leading some to suggest that Mr Greenslade has spent more time lately scolding people and responding to newspaper articles than he has spent protecting and serving the Bahamian public.

“It’s in the newspaper – it’s in quotations… It’s shocking. I wish I could find a stronger word to demonstrate to you just how much that bothers me.

“As a legitimate police officer, as a legitimate servant of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, as a person with a reputation that can sit at the executive level in the world, with law enforcement colleagues – officers are very angry about that, the commissioner is bothered. It is a problem.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – we have to be careful with our pronouncements. This callousness must stop. We do it locally and then people who are foreign seem to just get on the bandwagon. I’m talking about us as a people and us as a nation. It is wrong and it must stop.”

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