The three British security officers who are here to fast-track the three million pounds Sterling ($1.05 billion) security sector reform project have begun work on setting up an anti-crime unit in the Guyana Police Force, Commissioner of Police (ag) Henry Greene has said.
Greene confirmed on Monday that the team of police officers from the International Academy Bramshill, part of the National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA), and the Scottish Police College are working on the anti-crime unit.
“They are working with us on crime intelligence and to some extent forensics, so work has started,” the acting Police Chief told a gathering at the opening of a junior officers’ course on Monday. He added that the security experts have also been meeting various other organizations. Stabroek News has attempted to contact the team, but this has proven futile thus far. Yesterday, a senior police official told this newspaper that the security officers have been meeting members of the force on various areas of work. The team arrived in Guyana last Wednesday and was scheduled to meet Greene, Home Affairs Minister, Clement Rohee and Attorney General, Doodnauth Singh.
The team is headed by International Policing Advisor for Latin America and the Caribbean, Superintendent Paul Morisetti and includes Alistair Cumming also of the NPIA and Bob McFarlane of the Scottish Police College.
British High Commissioner to Guyana Fraser Wheeler in an exclusive interview with this newspaper in August had announced that the NPIA would have been coming to begin work on the anti-crime unit and the crime intelligence plan.
A few years ago, Britain had provided some training to the Guyana Police Force to help establish a SWAT team, but authorities in the force had expressed concern that some of the men who had been identified for the squad were corrupt. The team was never formed. It is not clear what this new squad would be like, although Greene said that a unit already exists and from all appearances Britain would be building on it.
In addition to the experts here currently, the team that came last October to draw up the plan will return at some stage to revalidate some of the work and to detail how the plan would be implemented. On August 10, Britain and Guyana signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to implement the action plan over a four-year period. The plan seeks to build the operational capacity of the police force in terms of a uniformed response to serious crime, as well as augment forensics, crime intelligence and traffic policing capabilities. The plan will also strengthen policy-making across the security sector to make it more transparent, effective and better coordinated. Bringing financial management in the security sector under the umbrella of public sector financial management reform; creating substantial parliamentary and other oversight of the security sector and building greater public participation and inclusiveness on security sector issues are the other components of the plan.
Wheeler had told this newspaper that the plan had its genesis in a letter from President Bharrat Jagdeo to his predecessor, Steven Hiscock over a year ago. He said in that letter Jagdeo had asked for comprehensive assistance in the security sector, with solutions to arrest the deteriorating crime and security situation. According to Wheeler, this led to a meeting between Baroness Valerie Amos, former Leader in the House of Lords, and Jagdeo after which Britain had agreed to assist.
The two countries had next agreed on the principles by which the process would be taken forward and these principles had been agreed to between Jagdeo and Leader of the Opposition Robert Corbin before last year’s general elections. In October last year the UK sent a team of security reform experts from Ghana, South Africa, India and Sierra Leone with the express purpose of drawing up ideas for security-sector reform in Guyana. The high commissioner said before the experts came they read reports on security reforms in Guyana and engaged everyone involved in security as well. He said they had also had meetings with all the parliamentary political parties at the time.
It was after these interventions that the plan was crafted. “The important thing about this plan is that it is not just another security plan. We did not want to produce just another strategy; Guyana has a lot of strategies what we needed was an action plan that would be implemented,” Wheeler had said of the $1.05B security project back in August.
