'Wake up to gang threat' Bahamas

'Wake up to gang threat'
By ALISON LOWE
Tribune Staff Reporter
alowe@tribunemedia.net:



THE country must wake up to the "epidemic" scale of gang activity and the affect it is having on the nation's education system, said Pastor Carlos Reid, who yesterday called for the establishment of a "Gang Unit".

In the wake of the stabbing of three school boys in a fight at C I Gibson Senior School, dubbed the worst on-campus incident of violence in the school's history, Pastor Reid, founder of Youth Against Violence, said school gang violence is getting worse and a new trend is emerging - girls in gangs and gang culture in the country's institutes of higher learning.

"There's a whole heap of that, and the girls are more violent than the boys," said Mr Reid, who works closely with troubled youths. "The gang culture is now spinning off into the College of the Bahamas and BTVI."

On Thursday, three boys, two aged 16 and one 15, were stabbed and taken to hospital by emergency medical services. Three 11th grade students were taken into police custody in connection with the stabbings, and a further ten students in grades 11 and 10 were taken into custody for fighting.

As of yesterday, one student remained in custody and the rest had been released pending further investigations. All three injured students were still in hospital, and police were unable to confirm their condition.

Thursday's violence was reportedly over a girl, and Director of Education Lionel Sands said he did not believe it to be gang-related.

But Mr Reid said C I Gibson suffers from being in "the midst of lots of different warring zones", including Kemp Road, Wulff Road, Nassau Village and Fox Hill, where gangs such as the the Rebellions and the Fox Hill Dogs hold precedence.

Nonetheless, he stressed that C I Gibson is not unique in its plight, as "all of our schools are infected by this gang culture" which he feels can only be resolved through a focus on teaching "conflict resolution and mediation" to school children, along with an understanding that not all differences are a cause for a dispute.

Pastor Reid said he commonly sees problems arise when children have to switch schools - from junior to senior school for example - and then feel the need to have to "fight for their place" in a new system, or when children from one area are forced to attend school in another "territory" because of overcrowding at their local institution.

He suggested "restructuring" of schools to amalgamate junior and senior education would avoid these upheavals and therefore help reduce violence and encourage more respect for teachers, who would have been acquainted with students for a longer period of time.

Mr Reid, who works with troubled youth, said he wishes his organisation could get more involved with efforts to reach school children in conjunction with the Ministry of Education.

He lamented that a Taskforce for Safe Schools created by the Ministry of Education several months ago on which YAV had a seat has already seemed to fall by the wayside, having made little progress with no meetings held for "over two months".

"I've been agitating, we want to get involved, we want to get engaged. I believe in this climate there has to be a gang unit. Any fool could see we're in an epidemic. We did a study about six years ago and found there were over 50 gangs in The Bahamas, and they had a population of 15,000 collectively. It's grown significantly since then. We can still try to go sleep and hope when we wake up it will go away but it won't," said Pastor Reid.

The youth counsellor said he is concerned when he sees gun rampages and massacres in schools in the United States in particular, and wonders how long it will be before such an attack happens in The Bahamas given the failure to successfully address the growing gang problem.

"What could stop The Bahamas from having one of those? Those schools are more safe than our schools as far as their architectural design but our kids have the same mindset. Are we going to wait until something happens then say there's a problem? I believe all this money the government is borrowing for roads, they should be borrowing money to make the schools safe," said Pastor Reid.

Pastor Reid said fear of violence is stopping many children who may find their classes interesting from achieving their potential in school.

"This is going to be a scary place to be able to envision in the next five years. Right now alot of kids are afraid to learn in school. I've had a boy tell me that he'll be at school thinking '3 o'clock soon come and something could happen to me. I can't concentrate on learning.' Some kids say they have to leave school early, jump the wall to get out safe," said Mr Reid.

On Thursday, education officials "staggered" the release of 10th and 11th grade students from C I Gibson school to minimise the potential for more fights and retaliatory attacks, something which was also feared by several parents who gathered outside the locked school gates to call for their children to be released from classes immediately for their own safety.

At Youth Against Violence's Hope Centre, where a programme for suspended students is held, Pastor Reid said he has seen enrollment rise from 67 in the first year to 138 in the second year and over 300 this year. He links the rise both to a growing awareness of the programme in the community and to more unruly behaviour among students on the whole.

The YAC founder said the programme provides a chance for students to re-focus themselves through participation in classes in mechanics, bodywork, video and audio labs, computers, music and more.

"What we're looking to be able to do is partner with some other agencies so that we could send some of kids to work in some of these different areas of employemnt for a week or two weeks, so they can be around a different breed of people. These kids spend their lives having to navigate through a very differnt world," he said.

May 22, 2010

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