I did a double-take when I read a newspaper headline today:  British Man Murdered in the Bahamas, American Arrested on Drug Charges.  

It wasn’t that the murder in the Bahamas surprised me. Murders in and around New Providence (Nassau) seem to be a daily occurrence in the Bahamas. Violent homicides and shootings are reported routinely by the Tribune, Nassau Guardian and Bahamas Weekly newspapers. Nassau is heading for a record number of gun related murders. The Bahamian legal system is broken and the society is frayed. The crime is so bad in the Bahamas that the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Embassy in Nassau, and the Canadian government issued a record-number (six) crime warnings in just the last 16 months. 

Today the murder stories in the Tribune newspaper in Nassau include Mystery Over 49th Murder Of The Year, British Man Killed at Dive Centre, and this dreadful one – Mother Found Dead And Tied To A Tree. 

What surprised me today is that a newspaper decided to lump yet another unsolved murder of a British citizen with something as mundane as a U.S. cruise tourist getting busted for a joint or two on a cruise ship at the Prince George Wharf.   

The local police in the Bahamas are clueless in solving homicides. They seem to focus their efforts conducting warrant-less searches for marijuana at the port. They enter cruise ship cabins without a hint of probable cause and arrest tourists for small quantities of pot (which they call a "dangerous drug"). It’s an easy way to shake tourists down for a thousand or two dollars. They should be called revenue agents.  

One of the chief complaints we hear from cruise passengers sailing to Nassau is that they are constantly harassed by the local citizens to buy pot the second they step off the cruise ship. You can easily buy pot at the Straw Market and up and down Bay Street. The drug dealers, police and judges are all eating from the same trough. Meanwhile, the murderers in Nassau are running free in the streets. 

Have a thought? Please leave a comment below or join the discussion on our Facebook page. 

Photo Credit: Tribune 242 Newspaper