While the police have clearly made some progress in dealing with Rondell Rawlins’s gang, the public is nevertheless puzzled as to why, in the first instance, most of the members had been able to escape during the Christmas Falls operation. Since the security forces had succeeded in identifying the campsite in the jungle where Rawlins and others had taken up residence, had sufficient time to plan their assault, and also had the advantage of surprise, that should have been the end of the saga. Instead, when the police arrived on June 6, there was a shoot-out with the gunmen, during which one of them was killed and about six others disappeared into the surrounding rainforest.
While it is not an exact parallel, one was nevertheless reminded in one respect of the killing of Superintendent Leon Fraser on April 2, 2002, in circumstances which suggested gross carelessness on his part. He had received intelligence that three of the notorious escapees were camped in a clearing in the bush off the Linden-Soesdyke Highway, where they had a car and a tent. This newspaper was given to understand that when he arrived in the area he divided his squad of about twelve into two groups, and approached the car alone. The snapping of a twig, it was suggested, had alerted the bandits who were resting inside, and they opened fire, killing Mr Fraser and then making good their escape. In other words, he had no plan, and maybe even had taken insufficient men with him to accomplish the task in hand.
The Christmas Falls operation on June 6 was obviously not anywhere near as ad hoc as the Fraser case, but nonetheless to the layman’s eye it still appeared to leave a great deal to be desired in terms of organization and planning. This impression on the part of the public received confirmation last week from a professional military source, who told this newspaper that based on the results and reports available Christmas Falls had been poorly planned and poorly executed. He adverted to the fact that there had been little or no coordination between the police and the army, since the initial attack on the camp had been carried out by the police, and it was only after the gunmen had got away that the military had been called in. “Most of the top officers in the army and police were exposed to international training; I don’t believe this is what they produce,” he was quoted as saying.
With reference to omitting the army from the original undertaking, the officer was reported as saying: “How could you plan and go on such a major operation without involving your premier law enforcement agency?” He went on to refer to the fact that the army had a number of skilled officers, and certainly, from the citizenry’s point of view it is something of a mystery as to why the only force which has jungle training was not brought in from the inception. In addition, the tactics required to confront experienced gunmen encamped in the forest would seem to come more within the skills-set of the army than the police force. Despite earlier promises, the government still has not set up a unit within the GPF with the requisite training and equipment to cope with the new breed of criminals who have emerged since 2002.
Are we to infer from all this that there are strains between the army and the police force, or is it that the politicians do not trust the army? One must assume that since the GDF was excluded originally, a political decision must have been made at some level, since it is difficult to see the police without reference to anyone else deciding to act unilaterally in a matter where so much was at stake. Was whoever it was that cleared the operation perhaps inspired by a misplaced desire to enhance the image of the GPF by allowing them to capture the Rawlins’ gang on their own? Whatever the case, the government owes the public some explanation as to why the military was brought in only after it was too late.
Certainly no one in authority seems too clear at this stage about the exact location of the remaining members of the gang, since they appear to be popping up where they are least expected. All that can be said is that if any of them are still in the jungle, that environment may prove a bigger challenge to them than the Joint Services.
It may be that law enforcement missed an opportunity immediately after the Bartica killings of February 17, when the gunmen took refuge in the Linden area. In our March 9 edition we had reported residents living in and around Wismar as saying that they had seen strange men, but no one had thought anything about it because they were in army uniform. It was only after the Joint Services announced in early March that they had found what seemed to be an abandoned camp, that residents realized that the strange men they had seen had been gunmen and not soldiers.
Military personnel had descended on Wisroc, Linden, shortly after the Bartica killings looking for evidence of the gang, but the search had been abandoned after about three hours. It was a Linden resident who stated the obvious to this newspaper, commenting that there was a sense in the community that not enough time had been spent in the area during the critical period following the Bartica attack. In other words, perhaps because of a feeling of urgency, not enough care had been taken about planning the search in relation to possible escape routes.
As it is, planning has been the Achilles heel of law enforcement for a very long time. Following the fiasco of 2002-03, one would have thought that the government for its part would have at least learnt its lesson, ie, that there should be a premium on professionalism in law enforcement, not on politics, but one has the uneasy feeling that there is probably still too much political interference in security matters. Be that as it may, in terms of what should happen now, the military officer referred to above told Stabroek News, “They need to go back to the drawing board and assess where they went wrong and begin all over again.” He went on to observe that it made no sense staying in the jungle as it was costing the government [too much] and exposing the limitations of the country’s security forces.
Whether the powers-that-be will listen, of course, is another matter.
