Acting Comptroller of Customs, Ralph Munroe sat down with ZNS News for an interview on the Bahamas Customs and Excise Department’s response to the importation of illegal firearms.
Munroe said, “for many years it has been a challenge for us. Of course today, it is even a greater challenge. That’s not only for The Bahamas but across the entire region.”
Munroe outlined some of the ways in which persons attempt to bring weapons into the country. “Criminals, you know their minds are always thinking. And so you can look in terms of the engines of vehicles and motorbikes. They can put them in the engines. Anything like a microwave, you can look at refrigerators. Sometimes they’ll break it down. You can put them on the inside of cars under the seat, in the dashboard, in the door panel, anything along that line, old used furniture. And so there’s so many ways you can do it until its almost like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
The Acting Comptroller said more inspections are being conducted of items brought in by local couriers. These types of operations are done in partnership with the Royal Bahamas Police Force K-9 Unit. “In the air freight area, around the FBOs, that’s Fixed Based Operators, around the aircraft, we keep those areas hot. As well as on the dock area at Arawak Cay. Again, we keep those areas as hot as we can. But of course, criminals don’t lie down easy and they’ll call your bluff if you drop your guard. But with resources that we have we try to spread ourselves out to cover all the bases.”
Munroe admitted that all of country’s ports of entry cannot be monitored. He said, “the Defence Force is out there, they do what they can do. Clearly we have a very small marine unit for Customs. You’d find we have a vessel in Grand Bahama. We have vessels here in Nassau that we haven’t really used so much since the pandemic. But it is virtually impossible for the Customs Department of for any of the other law enforcement agencies to give the kind of policing to the borders of The Bahamas that it would need.”
