Dear Editor,

A good friend of mine who is a retired civil servant told me that her home on Man-O-War Circle was ransacked by burglars. This unfortunate incident occurred a little over a week ago. This was not the first time that her home was burglarized. If my memory serves me correctly, her daughter's home, which coincidentally is in the same area, was also burglarized a few years ago. There have been a plethora of house break-ins and burglaries in that community over the past several years.

Man-O-War Circle is situated in the Sergeant Major Road area. This is a lower-middle income tier neighborhood. It is becoming increasingly unsafe to live in this community. Unfortunately, the Sergeant Major Road community is teeming with miscreants and at-risk youth, most of whom are unemployed.

In many instances, many of these young men have been unemployed for years. Many of them squat at a building adjacent to the service station on Sergeant Major Road and can be seen strolling the streets during the morning rush hour as if they're heading to work. Their work entails hanging out on the blocks all day. Now I am not insinuating that these young men are culpable for the aforementioned ransacking of my friend's home. But it is too much of a coincidence that a community inundated with jobless young men who hang out on the blocks all day has an undue rate of house break-ins and burglaries.

The Sergeant Major Road community has become a hot spot for crime. The police have got to beef up patrols in that neighborhood. Perhaps the time has come for the Royal Bahamas Police Force to establish a police substation with the view of rescuing this community, which in my viewpoint is fast becoming another ghetto. The citizens of that community should also consider the possibility of establishing a neighborhood crime watch program. The police and the law-abiding denizens of Sergeant Major Road must take a proactive approach in rescuing that area.

- Kevin Evans

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