The cane is just not going to cut it. I shared with some of my colleagues that these brothers live in neighborhoods where they are getting whapped with a piece of stick all night, stabbed with knives, and pegged with screwdrivers that have been sharpened down, and they are leaking blood. When you come to a fella without even interviewing him, without sitting him down to find out why you did what you did, your only interest is caning him, because you are burned out and frustrated yourself. You say to him, ‘Bend over, you are getting six.’ And the boy grits his teeth, skin up his face, takes those six cuts, and he is gone. But have you really been effective? Caning him is no big deal, because he’s probably ducking bullets at night. He has a lot more things on his mind than that. On the other hand, we can further send our delinquent students into damnation by telling them they are no body and all we want to do is punish, punish, punish. Here at R.M. Bailey, we have been trying a lot of different things. But at the end of the day, nothing that we do is better than the voice itself. Nothing is better than talking to the child, listening, developing trust, developing a friendship. Feel free to come to me anytime if something is bothering you, because I was your age once before. Charles chuck Mackey, former vice principal and coach of the R. M. Bailey Pacers school.

~ Drexel Deal

There were times in meeting I was called a baby sitter, a social worker by my colleagues. Now that we have a different leader, he looks at it the way I look at it, and he supported me in what I was doing. There were times he saw me crying, and he would comfort me and say that’s okay. Commissioner Paul Farquharson was one of my biggest supporters.It used to hurt me, because I was trying to help somebody and they say I was babysitting. Don’t tell me I am babysitting, now that I have retired now I am babysitting. So not because I was trying to reach out and work with those children, don’t say I was babysitting them. I work the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for 22 years and I was rough in CID. I realize CID was the end result, because whenever you get to that stage you are almost finished. It is in line with the broken window theory, if you can save those youngsters before they start committing those big offenses, then they wouldn’t reach CID. Crime prevention was a part of my job, I believe in going out there and trying to prevent that youngster from committing crime. He should respect other people’s property. Supt. Allerdyce Strachan, the first female officer to rise to the rank of superintendent on the Royal Bahamas Police Force.

~ Drexel Deal