In a short article entitled "Man Shot Dead," the Nassau Guardian announced today that 99 people have been murdered in the Bahamas so far in 2014. The murder rate will exceed last year’s total.  The majority of the homicides have occurred in Nassau.  

The Tribune newspaper in Nassau contains a letter to the editor from a Bahamian citizen after he and his family were robbed for the eighth time. He said that his mother and sister were recently held up at gunpoint in their driveway. Criminals had previously kicked in his front door and ransacked his home, despite his "outdoor lights, alarms systems, powered gates." 

He lamented that he was "exhausted" and "fed up, despondent and depressed" that he could not protect his family and felt like a "prisoner in my home."

He expressed his conflict being torn between being a Christian and wanting to grab a gun and seek retribution.

The Bahamian newspapers announce armed robberies daily in New Providence, which is just one-tenth the population of Miami-Dade County.  

Will the $40-billion-dollar-a-year cruise industry do anything about crime in one of its favorite ports-of-call in the Caribbean? Will it invest any of its tax-free money into Nassau and focus on creating cruise-related jobs for the local citizens and security for the local residents and the tourists who travel there by cruise ship? Will it offer cruise jobs to the unemployed young men on the streets of Nassau?  Or will the cruise ships just up and leave if the 100th person gunned down in Nassau turns out to be a U.S. cruise passenger?   

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Photo Credit: cosmologicalcabbage.blogspot