{"id":23909,"date":"2012-07-23T08:31:01","date_gmt":"2012-07-23T12:31:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/?p=23909"},"modified":"2012-07-23T08:39:14","modified_gmt":"2012-07-23T12:39:14","slug":"police-prompted-to-release-crime-statistics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2012\/07\/police-prompted-to-release-crime-statistics","title":{"rendered":"Police Prompted To Release Crime Statistics"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tommy
Tommy Turnquest<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Former Minister of National Security Tommy Turnquest said there is no \u201cjustifiable reason\u201d for the failure of police to produce crime statistics for the first half of the year, especially if they substantiate reports that crime has decreased.<\/p>\n

However, Minister of State for National Security Keith Bell said Commissioner of Police Ellison Greenslade has sole discretion in releasing those statistics.<\/p>\n

He added that Greenslade\u2019s statement on Monday that serious crime, with the exception of armed robbery, is down six percent overall from the beginning of the year through the end of June, compared to the same time last year, appears to be accurate.<\/p>\n

Asked whether the Ministry of National Security directed the commissioner to withhold the data, Bell replied, \u201cAbsolutely not.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not interfering with the commissioner of police,\u201d he said. \u201cWhy would we tell the commissioner that? We want him to release it but we are not going to tell him when to release it. That is his discretion and he has always maintained that.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Greenslade said he was \u201cnot prepared\u201d to release the crime statistics just yet, although he maintained that crime has decreased in the first half of the year.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne would have thought that if those were the circumstances they would be happy to release them,\u201d said Turnquest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no justifiable reason why the media shouldn\u2019t be given crime statistics on a regular basis.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was minister of national security it was something that I was prepared to do whether it was good or bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turnquest said that commissioner is \u201cmandated to provide empirical evidence, and not to make statements\u201d without that evidence.<\/p>\n

But Bell said the commissioner\u2019s statement on crime should have been enough to satisfy the public at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is contemptuous for the commissioner to say \u2018this is what I am seeing\u2019 and then you have politicians on the other side getting involved,\u201d Bell said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt became a political football. The commissioner made a statement, and as he always has done, he will release [the statistics] in time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greenslade told The Nassau Guardian on Thursday that whether he could produce evidence \u201cis not the issue\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t speak to you or any member of the press and tell you about figures if I didn\u2019t have them,\u201d Greenslade said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do have them. So the issue of can we get statistics is not the issue. No one has asked me for statistics.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, The Guardian made numerous calls to senior members of the Police Force since Monday requesting the statistics. Messages were also left for Greenslade requesting the statistics earlier this week.<\/p>\n

The Guardian has also made numerous requests for the information in the past few weeks, but to no avail.<\/p>\n

Asked when he would be prepared to release the statistics, Greenslade said, \u201cI’m not willing to say at the moment, except to tell you that I will release them. I’m not prepared to release them today (Thursday), but I will release them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turnquest added that it was \u201cmost appropriate\u201d to make crime data available after each quarter of the year.<\/p>\n

The Nassau Guardian<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is no \u201cjustifiable reason\u201d for the police force’s failure to produce crime statistics for the first half of the year, especially since police claim crime has decreased, yet no statistics are forthcoming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[31,38,389],"class_list":["post-23909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","tag-crime","tag-police","tag-statistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23909\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}