An Open Letter
An Open Letter
To: The Government of The Bahamas, The Attorney General, The Director of Public Prosecutions, The Commissioner of Police and The Judiciary
From: An American Former Prosecutor and Attorney With Bahamian Roots
Date: October 1, 2026
A Call for Justice From Someone With Bahamian Roots
I am writing this open letter as an American former prosecutor and attorney with Bahamian roots through my grandparents, who came from Nassau.
Yesterday, I listened to the voice note involving former Royal Bahamas Police Force officer Bernard Swann, badge number 1414, after finding it publicly posted on the Bahama Drama Facebook page. As of the time of writing this letter, the recording remains publicly available on that page.
I listened to it carefully.
And as someone who has worked professionally within the criminal justice system, what I heard was deeply troubling.
I understand the importance of evidence.
I understand the importance of credibility.
I understand the importance of a witness being truthful.
And I understand what happens to a criminal case when the credibility of a law enforcement witness becomes fundamentally compromised.
That is why I believe The Bahamas has a serious question to answer.
If Bernard Swann is the voice on that recording, and if the statements attributed to him are genuine, then the Government of The Bahamas has an obligation to determine exactly how far the consequences of those statements reach.
This is not simply about one former police officer.
It is about every person whose liberty may have been affected by evidence, reports or testimony connected to him.
The Badge 1414 Problem
The recording I heard contains extraordinarily serious statements.
Swann identifies himself as Bernard Swann and identifies 1414 as his police number. The same statements were reported publicly by The Tribune in 2019, which reported that Swann claimed police officers fixed reports, lied to cover inadequate investigations, beat people, forced confessions and then lied in court to send people to prison.
Those are not ordinary accusations.
They go directly to the integrity of criminal convictions.
And if an officer admits that he participated in fabricating police work, the justice system cannot simply assume that everything he previously said in police reports, investigations or court testimony was truthful.
That is the fundamental issue.
I am not saying that every statement Bernard Swann ever made has already been legally proven false.
I am saying something different.
His own alleged admissions create a credibility problem so serious that every criminal case in which he played a material role should be considered potentially contaminated until the evidence can be independently examined.
That is what a justice system is supposed to do when the reliability of a material witness is seriously called into question.
Every Case Must Be Found
The Government should identify every criminal case in which Bernard Swann participated as an investigating officer, arresting officer, witness, report writer, officer involved in obtaining a confession or any other role that materially contributed to the prosecution.
Those cases should not simply be placed in a filing cabinet and forgotten.
They should be reviewed.
The question should be:
Can the conviction still be safely supported by reliable and independent evidence if Bernard Swann’s evidence is removed from the equation?
If the answer is yes, the conviction may survive.
If the answer is no, then the matter should be taken back through the appropriate legal process.
That is not revenge.
That is due process.
A confession from a police officer that he fabricated evidence creates a reasonable basis for asking whether other evidence connected to him can still be trusted.
The People Who May Have Lost Years
And now we have to talk about the people.
People who may have spent years inside Fox Hill Prison.
People who may have missed the childhoods of their children.
People who may have lost marriages, employment, businesses, homes and opportunities.
People who may have been physically beaten.
People who may have been forced into confessions.
People who may have carried the label of criminal for years when they may not have deserved it.
If the evidence eventually establishes that someone’s conviction was materially affected by police misconduct, what does The Bahamas owe that person?
The answer cannot simply be:
You are free now.
Freedom cannot return ten years.
Freedom cannot return twenty years.
Freedom cannot restore a lost childhood.
Freedom cannot restore a destroyed marriage.
Freedom cannot automatically restore a person’s reputation.
And freedom cannot erase physical abuse.
The Government Must Make It Right
If the State wrongfully takes a person’s liberty, then the State must be prepared to provide meaningful redress where the law establishes responsibility.
That should include serious consideration of compensation for people who can prove that they were wrongfully imprisoned or otherwise harmed through police misconduct.
The amount should reflect the circumstances of each case.
Years of imprisonment.
Lost income.
Lost employment opportunities.
Lost business opportunities.
Physical injuries.
Police beatings.
Forced confessions.
Emotional and psychological suffering.
Damage to reputation.
Damage to family relationships.
Legal expenses and other losses recognized by law.
This should not be viewed as charity.
It should be viewed as restitution for an injury that the justice system itself may have caused.
The Bahamas Already Knows Police Misconduct Can Have Legal Consequences
This concern is not based only on the Swann recording.
The Tribune reported in 2019 that Bahamian courts had already dealt with cases involving allegations of police brutality and unreliable police evidence, including a case in which the Court of Appeal overturned a conviction after finding that police had beaten a man to obtain a confession.
That history makes the Swann recording more important, not less.
The question is no longer simply whether one former officer made disturbing statements.
The question is whether those statements point toward individual misconduct or whether they reveal problems that affected actual criminal cases.
Only a serious independent examination can answer that.
An Independent Review Is Needed
I would urge the Government to establish an independent review mechanism capable of examining every case in which Bernard Swann played a material role.
The review should have access to police files, court transcripts, confession statements, witness statements, medical records and other relevant evidence.
It should examine the evidence that existed independently of Swann.
It should identify cases in which his evidence was essential to the prosecution.
And where credible evidence establishes that a conviction may have resulted from police misconduct, those cases should be referred to the appropriate legal authority and, where necessary, the courts.
The objective should not be to manufacture innocence.
The objective should be to discover the truth.
If the convictions are sound, let the evidence demonstrate that.
If they are not, correct them.
If people were wrongfully imprisoned, compensate them according to law.
The Badge Cannot Be Above the Law
A police badge gives an officer authority.
It does not give an officer the authority to manufacture evidence.
It does not give an officer the right to lie under oath.
It does not give an officer the right to fabricate a police report.
It does not give an officer the right to beat a confession out of a suspect.
And it certainly does not give an officer the right to take years of an innocent person’s life.
The justice system must be stronger than the individual officer.
When the credibility of a former officer is seriously compromised, the system must have the courage to go back and determine what damage may have been done.
To the Government of The Bahamas
Open the files.
Find every case involving Bernard Swann, badge number 1414.
Review every conviction in which he played a material role.
Examine his reports.
Examine his testimony.
Examine every confession connected to his investigations.
Examine the independent evidence.
Find the people who may have been harmed.
Give them access to justice.
And where the evidence establishes that someone was wrongfully imprisoned or physically abused by State officials, provide a lawful avenue for meaningful compensation.
Do not be afraid of what an investigation may uncover.
Be afraid of what happens when a government knows that people may have been wrongfully imprisoned and chooses not to look.
As an American former prosecutor and attorney with family roots in Nassau, I am not asking The Bahamas to condemn Bernard Swann based on a voice recording.
I am asking The Bahamas to do something much more important.
Investigate.
Verify.
Review.
Correct.
And where necessary, compensate.
Because justice is not simply about finding people guilty.
Justice is about making sure that the evidence used to take away a person’s freedom can be trusted.
And when the integrity of that evidence is called into question by the person who helped create it, the justice system has a duty to look again.
The Bahamian people deserve nothing less.
Sincerely,
An American Former Prosecutor and Attorney With Bahamian Roots
Page Reply:
Thank you for your letter, and it was very informative information with many things that I didn’t know as a Bahamian citizen myself. I didn’t know that these victims could still claim financial compensation from the Bahamas government after all of these years that has passed 😳 Marvin Dames and Anthony Ferguson were the ones originally in charge when these explosive allegations surfaced, yet after initial dismissals and a promised probe, the public was left completely in the dark, so what actually happened to the investigation, and why was the outcome never shared with the Bahamian public by the justice system?
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