Voicing concern about the availability of illegal guns on the island, Assistant Commissioner of Police Ellison Greenslade told Rotarians recently that the matter continues to challenge police. <\/p>\n
“During the first three weeks of January 2006, six high powered illegal handguns were recovered in Grand Bahama,” he said<\/p>\n
“During 2005, far too many of our young men died as a result of injuries sustained from illegal guns in the hands of their friends and associates.”<\/p>\n
Mr. Greenslade said 14 of the 18 murders committed in the northern Bahamas were committed in Grand Bahama and the majority of the victims were young adult Bahamian males.<\/p>\n
As part of efforts to address the illegal firearms problem, Chief Superintendent Basil Rahming said a road search operation was carried out the first week of March.<\/p>\n
Mr. Rahming said police want to ensure that the weapons are confiscated before they are used in the commission of crimes like armed robbery and murder.<\/p>\n
Police say guns were used in 65 percent of murders committed in Grand Bahama in 2005.<\/p>\n
Illegal guns, according to police, remain a challenge on the national level as well.<\/p>\n
On March 6, police officers in New Providence started a multi-pronged initiative in an “aggressive” three-month crackdown on firearm-related crime.<\/p>\n
For the first six weeks of 2006, police recovered 29 weapons from the streets of Nassau and Grand Bahama, Chief Superintendent Marvin Dames said. <\/p>\n
“Criminal possession of firearms and the use of firearms in the commission of crimes continue to rise,” Mr. Dames said.<\/p>\n
“Figures for 2005 show that 65 percent of reported homicides and 76 percent of reported armed robberies involved the use of a firearm. This is unacceptable. We shall spare no effort in our attempts to take firearms out of the hands of criminals.”<\/p>\n
The nationwide initiative involves the uniform and plain-clothes branches of the force, along with the Criminal Detective and Drug Enforcement units.<\/p>\n
By: Daphne McIntosh, The Bahama Journal<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Grand Bahama police have reported that they seized 20 illegal firearms on the island for the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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":[],"class_list":["post-249223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249223","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}