Police Commissioner Clayton Fernander has a warning for criminals, especially those who put the lives of the members of the Royal Bahamas Police Force (RBPF) at risk.
“We are not in the business of no warning shots. If your officers’ lives are in danger, or any civilians (are in danger), they have the right to do what they have to do.
“If an individual pulls a weapon on you, you can’t wait for them to (shoot). Growing up, you never thought that someone will actually shoot at a police officer in uniform. Just their presence in uniform, should say, ‘boy I can’t do that’,” Fernander said on the television programme on the Jones Communication Network (JCN).
There have been several police related killings so far this year, with the latest occurring last Thursday, when a man was shot and killed by police when he produced a handgun and engaged the officers.
Last year, 21 police-involved shootings were recorded, 13 of which were fatal.
During the programme, the police commissioner spoke about police-involved shootings, rising crime and the establishment of a new task force that will include officers from all law enforcement agencies to better combat violent crime.
He reiterated that the work of police officers had become much more burdensome with the courts on bail persons arrested on murder related offences and police having to re-arrest some of those persons for the same offence.
“It’s hard for a family to see the person responsible for the death of their brother, their loved one….in the food store shopping and they on bail and they on the side of you shopping. It’s hard to see that,” he said.
He defended the decision to establish the joint task force.
“I will move quickly to identify a firearms taskforce. Our task force unit will consist of those same agencies (law enforcement agencies). We have already identified two officers from all of those agencies who will be a part of this task force, including our US partners.
“The office will be housed at police headquarters. We have already done our vetting with police officers. That office should be open between now and the second week in September,” he said, noting that the majority of the illegal guns are coming from the United States.
“Firearms continue to come into our country and get into the hands of criminals and eventually being used in the commission of offence,” he said.
“We continue to upgrade and we continue to train. We have officers now and we have our US partners who (are) assisting with the training and we have to continue to step up our game.
“’m not happy to that level to brag about it, but we are doing an excellent job in terms of executing, because we are an intelligent, driven police force and we had a lot of success based on our intel and we could only take it to another level.
“We should be in a position to say, based on who gets killed tonight – if we don’t pay attention – we almost could tell you who the next victim could be,” he said, adding that the Firearms and Gang Units of the police force will become more active in the community.
So far this year, at least 90 murders have been recorded here.