Security
Community policing has the potential to contribute measurably to human security and public safety. But should community policing groups be allowed to become a parallel force under the control of a political minister or should they be part of the Guyana Police Force under the command of the professionally-trained commissioner of police?
The community-based crime prevention committees which were introduced in 1976 as a response to certain types of anti-social behaviour and delinquency have been transformed beyond recognition into the present-day, centrally-directed Community Policing Organisation of Guyana. But, in the process, Guyana’s peculiar community policing system has come to mean different things to different people.
Local community policing groups grew out of the village vigilante groups of the 1964 ‘disturbances’ – a period of intense communal conflict and civil violence. Owing to the fact that some villages are inhabited by disproportionate numbers of either one or another ethnic group, community policing groups inevitably take on the complexion of the majority. This fact has created the impression, even unintentionally, that some resemble ethnic militias rather than broad-based, civic groups.
Correctly applied, community policing should be a procedure that promotes partnerships and problem-solving techniques to improve public safety by forging bonds of mutual trust between the police and the public. It is a methodology, not an organisation. It does not require establishing and equipping a parallel police force.
In conventional community policing practice in other countries, the police are seen as members of the community where they work. There are often more ‘beat duty’ policemen rather than station-bound functionaries and, as a result, much more community work gets done. The fundamental idea is that such a form of community policing establishes partnerships between the police and the public, emphasises problem solving, and places equal importance on public safety and public service with the aim of improving the quality of life.
From a social and psychological point of view, such a system would require a sea change in local police training and conduct from the present emphasis on prosecution and punishment to one of prevention and protection. Members of the Guyana Police Force seem to have been trained to ‘make cases’ rather than to listen, understand, think critically and solve problems. Superior officers are likely to judge their subordinates’ performance not by problems solved and the preservation of a crime-free environment but on the number of arrests they have recorded.
For a viable community policing system to come into being, therefore, the administration needs to re-examine its current model of policing rather than replicating the dangerously outdated ‘disturbances’ model of vigilantism. It should also consider establishing a truly national system that will include many more of the communities which are now excluded. It should aim at repairing relations between communities of different ethnicities which were damaged during the troubles on the East Coast or by police brutality and extra-judicial killings. In fact, the very notion of a ‘group’ means that some persons will be included and others will be excluded. As a concept, the community includes everyone but ‘group’ doesn’t.
The administration has introduced a completely different concept which has involved the establishment of groups which are nothing less than village vigilante squads. Unfortunately, the locations which have been selected seem to coincide with pre-existent political strongholds that ignore vast areas of the country. The result is that certain areas that have been affected by crimes such as contraband smuggling, trafficking in persons and domestic violence might have no community groups and precious little police protection.
Terrible rape-murders of very old women or very young girls have occurred in some places such as Wakenaam Island and Parika, for example. Efficient community policing practice might have identified vulnerable persons, anticipated the threats to their lives and directed the regular police to pay special attention to them. The idea here is that threats to villagers do not come always from ‘outsiders.’ They could come also from local layabouts and vagabonds.
Under the present model, emphasis is placed on enforcement rather than protection. The Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee’s most popular weekend pastime is doling out some enforcement implements – ammunition; batons; bicycles; boats; vehicles; motor-cycles; shotguns etc – to policing groups some place or the other. The enforcement mindset is reinforced by the daily activities of the groups. In March this year, for example, Rohee boasted that, over the last two years, community policing groups effected over 1,000 arrests, initiated over 500 charges and conducted over 300,000 patrols. In March last year, he called for the presence of rural constables in each CPG who will be trained in “methods of arrest and the use of firearms,” not in conflict resolution.
The inappropriateness of the present model of community policing was evident during the troubles on the East Coast and, in particular, the various massacres that occurred in populated areas such as Agricola, Bagotstown-Eccles, Bartica, Campbellville and Lusignan which left dozens of persons dead. Referring to these cases, Rohee ignored the reality of the speed, shock and intensity of these criminal acts the sheer scale of which left even the regular police paralysed.
He emphasized, nevertheless, that “We have to draw certain lessons from these deficiencies and the key lessons are that in every community there must be a community policing group to help the police by providing them with local intelligence. Secondly, we must ensure that the groups are active and are constantly functioning. And, thirdly, we must ensure that they must have [rural constables] who have their precepts and requisite training. They must have one or two weapons.” Does the minister seriously think that some rural constables armed with “one or two weapons” would have made a difference to the outcomes of those extraordinarily violent crimes?
The administration has taken several concrete steps to institutionalise its model. To start with, it has established a Community Policing Group Secretariat in the Ministry of Home Affairs which maintains contact with groups to ascertain their daily activities. The data collected are compiled in the ministry. In addition, a new constitution of the so-called ‘Community Policing Organisation of Guyana” has been drafted and representatives of community policing groups were invited to examine and adopt it. This suggests that the ‘Organisation’ is meant to operate outside of the Police Act. The ‘Organisation’ already has a structure and merrily conducts annual elections for a National Community Policing Executive.
What is needed, however, is not the contrivance of a constitution, the formulation of new regulations and the erection of a new security structure but the full compliance with the existing national law. Promises that “community policing is, and shall remain, an integral part of the government’s crime-fighting strategy,” should not mean that extra-legal measures should be contemplated.
Despite the millions expended every year and the effort put into the community policing groups, the ‘Organisation’ has not been functioning smoothly. One casualty of the fuzzy objectives and the voluntary membership of the groups has been that persons are free to enter and free to leave and that groups appear and disappear, depending on the interest of their members. There were supposed to be 353 groups in 2002 but these were reduced to 228 groups in 2004 and to 214 in 2009, with over 4,047 members, a number greater than the total membership of the regular Police Force.
The distribution of the groups is dangerously lopsided. There are 57 groups with 1,600 members in Police ‘C’ Division on the East Coast Demerara with main centres at Enmore, Strathspey, Golden Grove, Enterprise, Bladen Hall, Annandale, Triumph, Montrose and Ogle. This is hardly geographically diverse or representative of the entire area’s population.
Some groups have become dysfunctional or are chronically underperforming. One administration politician complained that many community policing groups “emerged when there were instances of crime or threats of security breaches; once these subsided, these groups returned to dormancy, thus posing a challenge to the police in terms of their consistency and reliability.” Rohee himself spoke of concerns about the functioning of some groups which were seen as “exclusive clubs to themselves.” He appealed to them to ensure [that] they maintain cordial contact with their communities and complained that “several persons do not understand the role of CPGs,” challenging them to make
determined efforts to “bridge the disconnect” between themselves and their respective communities.
The ‘disconnect’ is real and exists as much between the groups and their communities as between the groups and the police. Some groups fail because of poor public and police support arising from uncertainty about the concept of community policing. A few years ago, the commander of one police division accused community policing groups there of having “lost their focus” and told them that there was need for them to re-examine their role and legal status and “determine whether their mandate was relevant to today’s society.”
Various Ministers of Home Affairs have had to appeal to villagers repeatedly to resuscitate defunct community policing groups. This most often occurs after some atrocity. On one occasion, Minister of Home Affairs Gail Teixeira told residents of Betsy Ground, East Canje, Berbice, where an armed gang had beaten and robbed a family, to ‘pull up their boot straps’ at the police, community police and local government levels. On another occasion in the Canal No. 2 Polder, in Police ‘D’ Division on the West Demerara where families were robbed and terrorized by an armed gang, Rohee complained that of the 35 policing groups on record only 20 were active.
The time has come for the administration to rethink completely the concept of community policing. The administration must change its mindset and abandon the ‘village vigilante’ model. As a national, rather than communal government, it must consider the country’s whole geographical space and work with all communities – hinterland, urban and rural – to inculcate in them the value of involvement in public safety, not only for crime but also for civil defence including protection from fires and floods.
Correct community policing can be an important facet of policing but it must be incorporated fully in the curriculum of training of professional officers and a public education programme for communities. The Police Force itself must be brought up to its manpower establishment strength to enable it to put more constables ‘on beat duty’ and be provided with the equipment to enable it to counter local crimes. Most important, as the law intended, complete responsibility for community policing must be restored to the commissioner of police where it belongs.