Two senior police officers have been transferred to separate interior locations for failing to take action which could have prevented PNCR protestors on Thursday from altering their approved route.
Stabroek News has been reliably informed that the decision to discipline them came following a high-level meeting on Friday afternoon, at which the police were assessing their response or lack thereof to a PNCR march, which went out of control.
This newspaper understands that the two officers – an inspector and an Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) both of whom are attached to the Tactical Services Unit (TSC), Eve Leary, have now been assigned to Kamarang and Mabaruma respectively.
According to the information, the two ranks were held to be at fault by their superiors, who considered that they had the power to stop the protestors before they reached parliament and then again at the corner of Regent and Wellington Streets.
President Jagdeo, when asked about the transfers at a press conference in State House yesterday, denied knowledge of them.
Stabroek News was told that on Thursday ranks had formed a human barricade across Wellington Street just off Regent Street, to prevent the crowd from reaching Freedom House.
However, no attempt was made by the heavily armed ranks there to disperse the crowd using tear gas or any other form of force. Things at this point got out of control with the protestors splitting up into groups and going off in separate directions.
The PNCR and its supporters embarked on a two-day march, which started on Thursday to protest the rising cost of living.
At Thursday’s march, Corbin had vowed that the protest marches would continue.
The march on that day had seen protesters overrunning police barriers and burning mock coffins and an effigy of President Bharrat Jagdeo in front of Parliament Building. During this march, the protestors altered the designated route and in one instance ended up in front of Parliament Building.
Then on Friday, the protest action was taken to the Office of the President, where protestors including opposition leader Robert Corbin shouted slogans and waved placards bemoaning the hardships citizens were enduring as a result of VAT and rice prices, among other things.
After about an hour of protest action outside OP, the protestors moved up Regent Street to Vlissengen Road and headed to the Square of the Revolution. Some then went to the Ministry of Human Services, where a similar exercise was held.
