Burchall Report: Deep Dark Secrets
[Written by Larry Burchall] In 1996, James Caines was shot. He managed to get home to his mother and that is where he died. Before dying though, he named his killers. Because he was able to name the shooters, because of good follow-up Police and Prosecutions work, two men were arrested, tried, convicted, and jailed.
In late 2010, with time off for good behaviour, one of those two men is due for release.
In 2003, though Bermudians didn’t know it at the time, something began to happen. From April 2003 when Shaundae Jones was shot and killed outside a Club in Dockyard; to Jason Lightbourne, shot and killed in 2006; and Shaki Crockwell, shot and killed in 2007; there has been a silence and a blindness. No arrests that have stuck. No trials. No convictions. No one sent to jail.
Then the macabre flood. From three unsolved killings over five years, Bermuda jumped to an additional seven killings just in the past eleven months.
Since 2003, all ten killings have the same chilling tag.
No trials.
No convictions.
No one punished or otherwise held to account.
In Bermuda there are up to ten lots of persons, probably all or mostly Bermudian, who are harbouring deep dark secrets.
Omari Gordon escaped from Police custody and, in nineteen mile long 13,000 acre Bermuda, was on the run for a year before finally being caught in Somerset. That was another secret that people in this community kept.
It seems that Bermuda is, or has become, a place of deep, dark, secrets. It is a fact. An unpleasant fact.
But why?
I believe its for 2 reasons:
a) It is a culturally accepted thing for people not to ‘snitch’ or become an ‘informer’
b) Although it has not happened, people fear that they would be in danger if the testified.
‘a’ is a result from an influence of foreign culture. Many dancehall songs look down upon co-operating with law enforcement, hip-hop does the same thing with the ‘don’t snitch’ movement. Young people especially tend to be greatly influenced by foreign pop culture and adopt it as their own.