The Bahamas: ...it must be made clear that there will be zero tolerance for police brutality in any form going forward, and all officers must be made to understand they will be held accountable for their actions

Time to tackle police brutality

By PACO NUNEZ
Tribune242 News Editor

Nassau, The Bahamas


A young man is at the wrong place at the wrong time. He walks into a grocery store right after it's been robbed and the cashier shot.

Overturned carts, frantic shoppers running about aimlessly, a pool of blood spreading across the floor; the shock of it all sends him bolting back through the door - right into the arms of a responding policeman.

Three hours later, the young man finds himself tied to a metal chair in a small, hot room, trying desperately to suck in air through a taught plastic bag as a burly officer pulls it taught yet again, while his colleague demands to know the name of the accomplice, the one who made off with the gun and the money.

In the end, terrified and exhausted, the young man signs a confession.

Such scenes are the stuff of a thousand detective novels and suspense movies. They are also a regular feature of the real life drama unfolding every day in our court system.

As a staff reporter I spent a year on the court beat, but can't bring to mind a single murder or armed robbery trial where the accused hadn't signed a confession while in police custody.

But when the court date came, they almost always pleaded not guilty. Their explanation? They are innocent, but the confession was beaten out of them.

As grim as violent crime trials can be, the presence of the same two officers, fingered by virtually every alleged victim of police brutality, waiting on the witness bench to tell yet another jury that, no, they didn't beat the accused, became the joke of the day among the Bank Lane press corps.

Of course, we knew that most of the sob stories were pure fiction. But we also knew that some of them had to be true.

Everyone knows suspects are beaten while in police custody; this country is far too small for that kind of thing to remain a secret. And I don't mean officers using force to secure a prisoner who lashes out or attempts to escape, I mean the use of violence to extract a confession, or sometimes just for fun.

Now, many Bahamians don't have a problem with this. This is a society plagued by crime and violence at unprecedented levels and many feel the justice system is just too soft on offenders; someone has to give them what they deserve.

The police are up against men who are little more than animals, and understand only violence, the argument goes.

And, we can be confident the right guy is taking the beating, because we have faith in the integrity of our police force.

But were the people who hold this attitude to pause and really think about it for a moment, they might come to some different conclusions.

Let us leave to one side for the moment abstract ideas of justice, lofty notions of human rights and the presumption of innocence, psychologists' arguments about how violence begets violence, and look at the matter the way a seasoned police officer would: in terms of good old-fashioned law and order.

CONSIDER:

* that while some of us, usually those with more to lose, do have confidence in the integrity of the police, a large and growing segment of the population doesn't - the very segment that concerns us: young men from inner city neighbourhoods, roughly between the ages of 15 and 35.

* that this is probably due in part to the fact that the victims of interview room beatings are usually drawn from this same demographic.

* that these young men, their relatives and friends are precisely the social group the police are taking great pains to reach out to as they continue to push the message that they can't solve crime alone.

* that if your son, nephew or family friend tells you horror stories about their treatment at the hands of police, you're probably less than likely to want to help officers with an investigation.

* that police are competing for the hearts and minds of inner city communities against a host of contrary influences, among them: a drug trade that promises money, popularity and power; a ghetto gun culture imported from the inner cities of our neighbour to the north; and various Caribbean subcultures that see the police as an instrument of oppression.

* that information secured by beatings or under torture is unreliable, as people will say anything to cause the pain to stop. Therefore, it is inevitable that sometimes the police will get a confession from the wrong man, leaving the real violent criminal loose on the streets.

With all this in mind, it isn't difficult to see how police brutality does far more harm than good, promoting the very culture of lawlessness and antagonism towards authority that are at the root of our crime problem in the first place.

Perhaps even more significant is a secondary effect: it erodes the faith in the police of the "majority in the middle", those who are neither the fans of "tough" policing of this kind, nor friends of the criminals.

Do countless suspects name the same two or three tormentors and describe an identical torture room in the bowels of CDU headquarters because they are telling the truth, or because there is a vast conspiracy amongst criminals?

Will officers really beat a man they suspect might be innocent, just because they're under pressure to get a confession?

Questions such as these muddy the waters of right and wrong, and lead many a law-abiding citizen to wonder if it isn't better to just avoid becoming involved at all - which, in turn, leaves the police with even fewer allies in the fight against crime.

How far this attitude can be justified is hard to say.

Senior officers do acknowledge that beatings happen, but put it down to the work of a few "bad apples."

Rogue cops certainly exist, but it is also true that fear and violence are considered important tools of the trade in certain units of the force.

A few years ago, the lead officer in a murder trial admitted to me that the case would be difficult to crack, because unlike most of the matters he handles, the witnesses and suspects were from wealthy families, came to police interviews with expert lawyers on hand, and therefore couldn't be questioned in the normal way.

"We can't beat 'em," he said when asked to elaborate.

Speaking to this officer at length, I got the impression that he genuinely wanted to do all he could to protect the public from criminals, but simply lacked the skills to conduct an investigation in any other fashion.

Officers

Yet police officers around the world employ a variety of reliable, efficient, methods of detection and interrogation that do not involve violence.

The government has made its move in the war against crime, bringing a raft of anti-crime Bills to parliament for debate this month.

It is high time the police force followed suit and acknowledged that a dramatic change is necessary if they want to win the confidence of the public and unite all facets of this society against crime.

The top brass should move immediately to identify the cutting-edge tools and techniques used in other countries that would be best suited to the Bahamas, and either send Police College staff to learn these methods, or bring the appropriate trainers in from overseas.

Most importantly, it must be made clear that there will be zero tolerance for police brutality in any form going forward, and all officers must be made to understand they will be held accountable for their actions.

What do you think?

pnunez@tribunemedia.net

October 31, 2011

tribune242 Insight

Teenage girls set to create a new wave of terror in The Bahamas

Teenage girls 'are new street thugs'
By NOELLE NICOLLS
Tribune Staff Reporter
nnicolls@tribunemedia.net:


TEENAGE girls look set to create a new wave of terror in the Bahamas, leading psychologist Dr David Allen has warned.

Dr Allen said a Harvard University study predicted that violence among girls was threatening to eclipse violence among teenage boys, who originally "led the way".

He said in the Bahamas there are early signs of this trend, and more needs to be done to look into the situation.

"I write with a sense of pain, confusion; a sense that we have a group of people growing up in our midst who we don't know, we are not studying. I am just amazed at what I am finding out here," said Dr Allen. "The young girls seem to be extremely violent."

One teenager, who attends a New Providence public school, said she agrees that "girls are fighting more than boys", but she said girl fights are less violent.

"The boys fight because of gangs. They would not fight over girls. The boys always fight with weapons. The girls don't usually fight with weapons. The girls do more of the cat fight," said the student.

"Girls mostly fight because they are fighting over boys or they are trying to get known. They go around picking fights, making trouble, so they could be known as the gangster girl. When people are scared of them and don't want to mess with them they can take advantage of people by asking them for money, just money. If you say you don't have lunch money they will try to boss you around and hit you," she said.

"If another girl is talking to the girl's boyfriend she would fight over that. That happens almost daily. Little small fights, like rowing. They would row for a couple days and then they would start fighting."

Several years ago there was concern expressed about a seeming rise in female gangs. The high school student said: "That is not really going on. In my school, ain no girls is check for the gangs. The girls who fight is not really because of the gangs, usually over boyfriends, or (interpersonal) conflicts. The female gang thing did not really catch on."

Teachers know about the fights in school, according to one student, but they stay inside the classrooms and "they don't get in it" in order to "protect themselves".

One junior school principal said she does not believe there has been a rise in girls involved in violence.

"I beg to disagree. To me we are seeing more of the gang violence coming to surface with persons crossing boundaries. According to the area you live in you just cannot go into certain areas. That is what is causing the friction amongst our boys," said the principal.

"Being in the school system we don't see so many girls involved in fights. I seriously can't see it. We would have to look at an in depth study. Dr Allen is probably not seeing a cross section of our community, where he is dealing with students from the upper class," she said.

July 21, 2010

tribune242

Bahamas Blog International

The roots of The Bahamas' crime epidemic

The roots of our crime epidemic
By PACO NUNEZ
Tribune News Editor:



BAHAMIANS are afraid. A recently circulated questionnaire revealed a public "deeply troubled" by the explosion of crime and violence in society.

Crime has been unacceptably high for decades, but over the past few years it has reached unprecedented levels. Many now say they feel like prisoners in their own homes, afraid of being attacked each time they step outside.

As people become increasingly concerned about their safety, calls have mounted for more serious measures to be taken.

Pro-hanging marches have become a common occurrence, and the vast majority of those polled said they believe some form of intervention by foreign law enforcement agencies is now necessary. There have even been murmurs of support for vigilante justice in the face of what is seen as an ineffective judicial system.

Our political class and some senior police officers would have us believe it's not as bad as all that. Admitting that crime is at an all-time high, they say the public perception of danger is nevertheless exaggerated; fear of crime is worse than crime itself. Even if this were true, it is difficult to understand why heightened alarm is in itself a bad thing (except, of course for the reputations of those charged with keeping the public safe). It stands to reason that the more fearful I am - or at least, the more alert and aware - the more likely I am to remain alive and unharmed.

In any case, the newly-released Report on Crime: Root Causes of Crime - an intensive study three years in the making - would seem to contradict this politically convenient narrative. It suggests crime and violence are not only perpetuated at the fringes of society as we have been repeatedly told, but fester at the very core of who we are as a people.

Led by eminent psychologist Dr David Allen, the research team repeated the approach used by the medical journal Lancet in its 1986 report on the cocaine epidemic in the Bahamas. In addition to conducting a series of confidential interviews, the research team organised focus groups consisting of:

* Families of murder victims,

* Those involved in programmes for students guilty of violent or disorderly behaviour,

* Chronic drug addicts,

* Troubled teenagers and parents,

* Public and private psychotherapy groups,

* Church groups,

* Individuals from violent neighbourhoods

The results indicated five primary causes of crime and violence in the Bahamas:

Chronic Violent

Drug Syndrome

The report noted that the Bahamas was the first country outside South America to experience a national crack cocaine addiction problem.

It said: "The chronic violent drug syndrome (CVDS) is the continuing devastating blow delivered to our country by the 1980s cocaine epidemic", noting that similar syndromes exist in Mexico, Colombia, Jamaica, and some US cities including Miami and Washington DC.

CVDS encourages serious crime in a number of ways, primarily through the violence and executions attendant upon the creation and maintenance of drug trafficking empires, "creating fear and panic among the public and empowering the drug barons in turf wars," the study said.

The syndrome also leads to increasing numbers of drug addicts, two thirds of whom are involved in multiple crimes, according to the research. "In and out of prison, these persons are cognitively impaired and find it hard to hold down a job," the study said.

It added that although the rate of new crack addictions does not seem to be increasing at the moment, there is a widespread and growing marijuana epidemic among children age 10 through adolescence. "This destroys educational potential since the brain is not fully developed until the mid-20s."

The study notes that the proliferation of firearms, both legal and illegal, is also a symptom of CVDS. "Guns and drugs go together. Young men tell me that getting a gun is easier than going to the mall," Dr Allen said.

This leads to murder becoming common and life being considered cheap. The drug business is by nature a "kill or be killed" existence and cultivating a dangerous reputation is both a survival tactic in a highly armed society and the primary means of getting ahead in the world.

One reaction to this is the formulation of gangs, which men and women - whether involved in the drug business or not - join for "affirmation, safety, protection, connection and empowerment".

Of course, in such an atmosphere the general work ethic and thereby the concept of personal property eventually cease to have any meaning. "With a gun, what is yours is mine. With a gun even if you lose the dice game, you still win," Dr Allen said.

As a consequence, regular citizens begin to live in fear and therefore decide to seek gun licenses.

The crack cocaine epidemic has also laid siege to the nuclear family in the Bahamas as it engulfs parents, leaving children to fend largely for themselves - particularly in terms of the formation of the ethical dimension of their character. Children remain "un-bonded and lack habilitation and social skills. There is no motivation for education in the home," the study said.

All this leads to sprees of violent crime which are not confined to any sector of society, as "the gun is the law in the drug world".

Anger

Unsurprising considering the consequences of CVDS, the researchers interviewed numerous Bahamians whose immediate response to becoming angry was to talk about killing, poisoning or suicide. This applied to one third of those interviewed, some of whom came from "respectable families".

"We have an anger problem in our midst," the report concluded, adding the frightening assertion that this often renders individuals literally unable to stop themselves from committing violent acts.

Dr Allen explained that poor childhood conditioning can lead to a society in which when individuals feel wounded, "instead of doing our grief work, we give over to destructive anger and shame, leading to resentment, bitterness, hardness of heart and finally grievance. At the grievance point we enter the 'blind spot'.

"My work shows we become possessed by evil or negative energy. Young men who have committed murder or extreme violence describe being taken over by a negative force. . . One man told me, 'All of a sudden I could not stop stabbing him. Looking back, I felt something was controlling me'."

While any explanation of individual behaviour which eliminates personal responsibility from the equation should be approached with extreme caution, the research team behind the study make a strong case for the argument that many young offenders have at least a diminished responsibility, as their behaviour is to some extend governed by factors beyond their control.

The study explained that anger causes diffuse physiological arousal (DPA) - the heart rate increases, blood pressure rises and the pulse quickens. "Because of the intimate connection of the heart to the brain, when the pulse rises 10 per cent above normal, the IQ drops 20 to 30 points," it said.

In addition, a person who lacks appropriate strategies for dealing with anger often suffers from alexithymia, or an inability to express feelings or strong emotions.

"If a person cannot express 'I am angry' or 'I am hurt' they will act it out. For example, a young man who beat a woman said he wanted her to feel what he was feeling. When asked what he was feeling, he said, 'I don't know'," the study noted.

Economic downturn

Men, the study contends, derive a great deal of their self-esteem from their employment.

"Men without work become angry at their wife or girlfriend and the children suffer. Some persons respond by a wish to die (suicide). Although there is no direct causal connection between poverty and crime, there is a clear connection between the loss of money or status and increased rage or suicidal ideation," it said, noting the case of a local woman who said that after recently losing his job, her boyfriend kept a hangman's noose in the bedroom, telling her he could no longer afford to give her what she wanted, "so when the time was right, he would hang himself".

The study added: "Young girls make themselves available to older men in a form of prostitution which is becoming increasingly common. This is seen as an acceptable way to pay for education or family bills, eg, cable, electricity and water".

Affects of child abuse

In an Insight article published last year, Dr Allen said his work over the years has revealed that child abuse is alarmingly widespread in this country.

The study notes that nearly all troubled children are victims of some type of abuse, especially physical and sexual abuse.

Trauma

The study noted that on average, each victim of violence has a "sociophile" of 100 people, including family members, friends, neighbours, et cetera, who are in turn traumatised by the victim's trauma. If one pauses to consider the thousands of violent crimes perpetuated in this country on an annual basis, the number of affected persons is revealed to be truly staggering.

The symptoms of trauma include several which can lead to yet more violent crime, such as:

* Anger and a need for revenge. Dr Allen tells of a woman who rushed into a local shelter wielding a machete and saying someone had just killed her brother. "Because her brother was the supporter of the family and acted like the father she felt obligated to kill his murderer," he explained. Had it not been for the intervention of a member of the research team, the woman might have become a murderer herself.

* Fear of being alone. This often drives young people into the waiting arms of gangs. One young boy interviewed as part of the study said a friend of his was killed because he was alone. "He should have been with his boys," the young man said.

* Magical thinking. Dr Allen said a young boy told him: "If you get stabbed, just hold your chest and you will not die. My friend did it and he lived."

* Short life expectancy. A group of 12 to 15 year-olds told the research team they did not expect to live to be 25 or 30, because they know someone who was killed.

* Glorification of violence. A 15-year-old who stabbed another boy said violence is cool. "If you kill you get stripes and you will only spend six months in jail," he said.

* Suicidal tendencies. When a young person committed suicide, friends said the person was better off, and they wish they could do the same.

* Poor cognitive skills, disinterest in school, inability to concentrates and poor impulse controls. This leads to fights and stabbings, the study found.

Response

According to Dr Allen and his team, what the Bahamas must do is replace this culture of violence and destruction with one of "life and hope". In light of the formidable obstacles to such a transition outlined in the study, this is by no means an easy task.

Dr Allen suggests that we need to develop leaders in all segments of this community; individuals who "absorb chaos, exude calm and instill hope".

He added: "Studies show that child abuse can be greatly reduced by neighbourhood walkarounds. If every church adopted the community around their church, and did weekly walkabouts they would observe child abuse, neglect and other crimes in the making. This is a powerful crime prevention process. Using this methodology, since there is a church on every corner, we could revolutionise the Bahamas in three years."

Dr Allen also recommended that we teach people the skills necessary to deal with anger and trauma peacefully and constructively, beginning with simple steps like dealing with provocation by slow breathing and visualisation techniques.

The question is, how can a society driven by traumatic circumstances to cynicism and hard-heartedness ever open up to such methods?

This is a problem we will probably continue to struggle with, if not forever, at least for the foreseeable future. One thing, however, is certain - we will never solve it by pretending that crime and violence are the purview of a small, fringe element of society.

Violent crime may not exist in all places at all times, but the seeds of aggression and criminality have been sown into the very fabric of the Bahamian character over the past few decades and no one is immune to the consequences. The sooner we admit this and get on with finding the best way to tackle it, the better.

What do you think?

pnunez@tribunemedia.net

July 19, 2010

tribune242

Bahamas Blog International