The administration’s agreement to establish a special select committee on the Disciplined Forces Commission Report in the National Assembly must have been an embarrassing admission of its sloth and weakness. Coming as one of the mandatory pre-conditions for the implementation of Security Sector Reform Action Plan which was the subject of a memorandum of understanding signed by British High Commissioner Mr Fraser Wheeler and Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon in August 2007, the neglected report has now been rescued from semi-obscurity and given a new lease of life.
It was interesting that the British Government should have made the connection between its own intention to become involved in serious security reform in this country and the findings of the commission convened to investigate the functioning of local security forces. But it was also a recognition of the shameful fact that, nearly four years after the report was handed over and unanimously accepted by the National Assembly, the government of a sovereign state had to suffer the indignity of being directed by the former colonial power to fulfil such a basic public administration and public safety obligation.
Convened in the throes of the worst wave of criminal violence in post-independence history, the commission was seen as a laudable bipartisan response to a grave situation that had taken the lives of, perhaps, nearly two hundred persons. It emerged out of a series of engagements between the PPP/C administration and the PNCR opposition which started with the Herdmanston accord of 1998 and continued with the Jagan-Hoyte; Jagdeo-Hoyte and Jagdeo- Corbin dialogues.
The British government, like many Guyanese citizens, must have been aware of the value of the commission’s deliberations and recommendations. Appointed by President Bharrat Jagdeo after consultation with the opposition leader Robert Corbin and sworn in since June 2003, the Commission was required to inquire into the Guyana Police and Defence Forces and the Guyana Prison and the Fire Services, and making recommendations for their reform and professional development.
The National Assembly’s resolution to establish the commission was a real achievement. It was also pathbreaking as this was the most ambitious effort to examine all four forces – GDF; GPF; GFS; and GPS – at one time. The assembly’s unanimous approval of the final report was similarly inspiring as there was real hope that it would lead to an improvement in the performance of the forces and a reduction in the intensity of criminal violence in the country. It now seems that it was an egregious error of judgement to ignore its recommendations.
Policing is always difficult, moreso in the current security environment. Successful law enforcement can be assured, however, by maintaining a professional police force and by enlisting public support for crime prevention. What bolder step could the administration take than to improve police efficiency? What better place to start than by seeking the support of the people’s elected representatives in the National Assembly for the measures needed to strengthen the force and to curtail crime? So serious was the security situation five years ago that the commission was mandated to give priority to submitting a special report into the Guyana Police Force within ninety days! But, since the rush to present the report, the administration has been sitting on its hands. Things might be about to change.
The most important problem to be resolved in the police force is the state of its personnel. Deficiencies in training and discipline have impinged markedly on the performance of the force’s personnel. The main issue here is that the force is technologically backward. Too much of its work is still heavily labour-intensive and much is done by hand. As a result, procedures are ponderous and susceptible to procrastination and to tampering with voluminous files and papers. These provide the opportunity not only for loss, damage and inefficiency but also for graft, corruption and venality.
In addition, the force is chronically understaffed, probably by as much as 16 per cent. Many rural and hinterland police stations are so seriously understaffed and underequipped that constables are unavailable to leave their stations to conduct investigations promptly, to patrol their neighbourhoods or to respond to emergencies such as the attacks of armed bandits. Hundreds of members of the huge Special Constabulary are generally employed on static guard duties on government installations and residences as watchmen and women. In emergencies, therefore, they remain at their posts and are unavailable to work where they are most needed ? as a ready reserve to the regular police in crime prevention and law enforcement.
The commission recommended that such simple jobs, as well as several others which are now performed by trained policemen, should be done by civilians who could be contracted to perform functions that do not require rigorous police training. These include, for example, the examination of vehicles for road fitness certificates; processing of passport applications and typing and secretarial work. The serving of summonses and similar simple or related duties in rural areas, also, could be done equally efficiently by civilian marshals or rural constables. These measures, if implemented, could put more policemen and women on the beat and on their street where their law enforcement abilities are needed.
Given the fact that promotion in the force is still unduly influenced by seniority, the commission recommended that the minimum educational criterion for recruitment should be raised from simply a sound primary education to, at least, a sound secondary education. Urgent consideration should be given also to the review of the three existing schemes by which cadets may be selected and advanced to hold gazetted rank. In addition, a modern police academy should be established (with at least one intake of cadets every year) owing to the need to produce well-educated officers who are skilled in police duties. This should help to place the selection and training of cadets on a regular and continuous basis. A revitalised cadetship scheme, leading to tertiary education in a well administered police academy, and supported by substantially increased remuneration, could attract more secondary school and university graduates.
Hundreds of complaints are made about the police every year. Police behaviour and public confidence in the force could both benefit if improvements were made to the Police Complaints Authority which, at present, is obliged to rely on sending those complaints to the police force to investigate its own members. The commission recommended that the Authority should be provided with its own investigative team consisting of trained police investigators who are directly responsible and accountable to the Authority. Investigators functioning in such a capacity should be seconded and transferred to the Authority for the purpose of transparency. Employing diligent and efficient retired police officers and others with requisite skills, therefore, staffing of the Authority could be done in accordance with its legislation. The independence of the Authority should also be maintained by providing adequate administrative and financial resources.
The second major set of problems concern the force’s law enforcement capability, particularly in the field of intelligence, investigations and inquests. The first necessity is for a sound national criminal intelligence system to be established and maintained. The staff of the Criminal Investigation Department should also be augmented by the recruitment of scientific experts from society at large who could serve in the force’s scientific laboratory and who would not be inhibited by the requirement to wear a policeman’s uniform and rank. In this way, more personnel could be made available to be trained in forensic skills such as ballistics, handwriting, fingerprinting and related fi
elds and, more of them could be deployed in the rural and hinterland divisions so as to reduce the need for all such investigations to be centred at the department’s Eve Leary headquarters.
The commission recommended that, in order to clear the current huge backlog, and to expedite the hearing of fresh cases, a special coroner’s office should be established to hold inquests or inquiries into unnatural deaths where the magistrate of any magisterial district is unable to do so. The special coroner’s office should be staffed with magistrates with national jurisdiction and should be subject to the chief magistrate’s administrative superintendence. As recommended for the Police Complaints Authority, the proposed Special Coroner’s Office should be provided with its own team of investigators to reduce its dependence on investigation by the police force.
This will enable the office to conduct independent investigations expediently rather than to continue to rely solely on the slow force.
It was recommended also that the definition of “coroner” should be amended to make each magistrate of every magisterial district a “coroner” for such district and to allow a magistrate of another magisterial district to hold either an inquest or inquiry where the magistrate of any magisterial district is unable to do so.
These, briefly, are a sample of the recommendations of the Disciplined Forces Commission for improving the Guyana police Force’s capability to deal with the ongoing wave of criminal violence. The manner in which the commission’s report was made into a political plaything, and its implementation deliberately delayed for over four years, were a disgrace. Public safety and the efficiency of policing during these troubles should be above petty politics.
