April 9 will mark 15 years since the shocking, unsolved murder of Monica Reece and the dumping of her body on Main Street. The lengthy period has not diminished the public’s interest in this haunting case which has long grown cold despite the lofty promises by the police that the case would be solved.
Aside from the fact that her family has gotten no justice and lives with the gnawing pain of this hideous killing, the murder was also an important marker for PPP/C governments and one which history will judge it rather harshly by.
Just months after the euphoria of the return to democracy and the triumph at the 1992 polls, the PPP/C government was faced with a body-dumping murder which set tongues wagging and appeared to involve well-known members of society. What followed was a combination of police bungling and incapacity at many levels in the law enforcement firmament.
The details of the case are no longer that important but the police were unable to adequately investigate in the immediate aftermath of the dumping, gather telling forensic evidence, interrogate suspects effectively and marshal witnesses.
If law enforcement and the government thought they could paper over the disastrous investigation and move on they were wrong. In the years that followed, the country was afflicted by murders of varying numbers, many going unsolved and suffering the same defects as the Reece probe: poor forensic capacity, zero or very limited intelligence and investigative work, confessions extracted by violence or poor interrogation and shaky prosecutorial ability.
Increasingly from 1993, the tentacles of the narcotics industry enmeshed society in bloody and extravagant violence and the reign of organized crime overran the underground, eased its periscope above water and began prospecting in various centres of power.
By the time of the jail-break in 2002, the noxious brew of law enforcement incompetence and the malevolence of narco-terrorism and organized crime created a perfect storm which the country has not recovered from. So much so that a wistful gaze back at the Reece murder may leave people thinking that that period wasn’t so bad after all.
Today, murders are being committed left, right and centre with no hope of solution. Very little has changed since 1993. When Reece was murdered it had been clear then that DNA testing was an indispensable tool in cracking seemingly insoluble cases. Reece suffered the double indignity of having to have her body dug up so that samples for DNA purposes could be taken. Nothing came of that testing overseas.
In the 15 years that have elapsed there has been no positive movement on ensuring DNA testing here and catering for it in the law. Several years ago, the Nandalall family did testing at their own expense to confirm that the remains found were indeed those of their missing son. When recently other remains were found in the clearing of the Buxton backlands, the family of the presumed victim was unable to identify anything and expensive DNA testing overseas was out of their reach. The discovery this month of the supposed remains of hotel owner Roselaine Hall has left her family with the task of having their own DNA testing done.
While Minister Rohee had spoken positively about moving towards DNA testing this was downplayed by the HPS Dr Luncheon at a subsequent briefing. Several weeks ago an advertisement appeared in the press for consulting services for a modern forensic laboratory for the police force – 15 years after the Reece fiasco.
That there has been no tangible advance in 15 years in investigating and solving crimes is an indictment of those who have headed these governments and held the portfolio of minister of home affairs. Nine of those years have been under the stewardship of President Jagdeo and despite his many promises there has been little improvement. Hence, the skepticism of the public of the varied initiatives that have been mooted over the years is well justified. The UK-funded Security Sector Action Reform Programme is now being looked upon as the main tool of transformation in the law enforcement armoury. Only time will tell but there is a view that the grafting of this plan onto a structure compromised by corruption, poor performance and heavy-handed political control will not yield the desired results.
The public won’t be easily fooled. It needs to see results. The best places to start are at Lusignan and Bartica. They epitomize the 15 years of inaction and entropic state of law and order in this country. Two months after Lusignan the public is still in deep ignorance about who was behind it and where the killers are. There is yet no convincing evidence that two men killed in a Buxton shoot-out had anything to do with Lusignan. A gun stolen during the Bartica massacre was found at Bucktown in Region 10 only two weeks later; evidence perhaps of how the Joint Services in the pivotal hours after the attack were unable to cut off escape routes and use their greater resources to defeat the killers.
The miasma not only pertains to the mass killings but also to the execution-style murders like the one that occurred on Thursday and Marcyn King’s the week before. The formula is the same. Men in a car roll up, identify their victim, open fire, drive away and escape the police. In the case of George Barton on Thursday the killers called his name before killing him, eerily similar to the way the entire death squad phenomenon began unravelling after the murder of Shafeek Bacchus.
Fifteen years after Reece, the responsibility is President Jagdeo’s to begin righting the law and order ship. Had he seriously taken on board the Symonds Report and the Disciplined Forces Commission report the country could have made significant strides in evening the scales between law and order and crime.
The grave danger of Lusignan and Bartica is that conspiracy theorists, the wily agent provocateur and the average citizen can mould dozens of motives to the events. These motives are then enlisted to suit various aims and plots which then pollute minds and deepen animosities. Nothing has happened since January 26 and February 17 to convince the public that real gains are being made in the fight against crime and in the vacuum that has been created there are palpable dangers.
