-murders down
Though elated that murders are down, the police say there is a serious threat that more guns and cocaine may be smuggled into Guyana with the recent opening of the Takutu Bridge that links with Brazil.
Criminals posing as tradesmen may now look to use that route to ply their trade, according to Crime Chief Seelall Persaud.
Persaud yesterday at a press conference said that the bridge coupled with a warehouse that is expected to be built at Linden, poses a serious “threat” but he believes with the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) soon to acquire a container scanner the force would be able to control the flow of cocaine and guns entering and going out of the country via that route.
And the country’s top crime fighter referred to the recent signing on by Guyana to the US initiative in partnership with the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to facilitate the electronic tracing of illicit firearms under a system called eTrace, which he said the country would soon have access to.
He said this would assist Guyana to further investigate firearms not only on the local front but also internationally to ascertain among other things whether the firearm was involved in any crime of organised movement in the producing countries.
Persaud revealed that there has been a decrease in the seizure of firearms this year compared to last year. While 112 were seized last year only 79 have been confiscated for the same period this year.
Another threat facing the country, according to the crime chief, is the anti-government types of crime as he pointed out that while the force has arrested those who were physically involved in the Ministry of Health fire those who planned the incident are still at large.
Decrease in murder
Meanwhile, the country has seen a thirty percent decrease in murder for this period compared to the figures last year with the Guyana Police Force solving more than half of the murders committed.
And while the decrease in murders may more than likely be due to the fact that last year massacres were committed at Lusignan, Bartica and Lindo Creek, Persaud still played up what he called the success of the force in slashing murders from 136 to 95 for the same period last year.
Presenting the crime statistics for the year yesterday at the Police Officers’ Mess, Eve Leary, Persaud, who is also an assistant commissioner of police, called on the media and members of the public to be balanced in their analysis of the force and to give the force their due when it is deserved and not only focus on the negatives.
He was joined in this regard by Commissioner of Police Henry Greene who said the force’s success was due mainly to “crime intelligence” which has become the force’s main focus. The commissioner said that many of the ranks who were in the Special Branch Unit of the force have been taken out to work in crime intelligence which has seen the force having “greater and greater success” with support from the Guyana Defence Force (GDF).
Rogue elements
He took issue with the force being accused of having rogue elements and challenged anyone to bring the rogue cops to the force’s top brass. He said for the year more than 80 policemen have been placed before the courts in relation to corruption and other charges.
And out of the 95 murders 31 were as a result of “disorderly behaviour, 22 were committed in domestic disputes, 16 during the commission of robberies, two were execution-style killings while the police deemed 23 as “unknown’ as Persaud said that they are yet to determine the motives and one murder was listed as “other”.
As has been the trend in the past, ‘A’ Division, which is Georgetown and its environs, accounted for the largest number of murders, 30 being the number in the ‘E&F’ Division, Linden and interior locations, with ‘D’ Division, West Coast and West Bank areas following with 18 murders each.
Persaud pointed out that there has been a “significant” decrease in execution-type murders while there has been an increase in robbery-related murders.
69.5% murders solved
The assistant commissioner said that the police have solved 69.5% of the murders committed and at this point he called for a balanced analysis of the entity.
“I wish to state here that the police force is part of society, we live here, our children go to school here just like everyone else. Our work depends a whole lot on cooperation from other members of the society and people’s behaviour are influenced by perception… Perception is formed by information and a lot of the information that society has access to is what the media put out,” Persaud said.
He called on the media to publish balanced reports about the force and listed a recent article in this newspaper which spoke about unsolved murders as a report that is not balanced since the article did not mention the murders that were solved.
According to Persaud the article sought to present a picture of “hopelessness” and that the force “just can’t deal with murders.”
“Sixty-nine point five percent is high by any standard in any part of the world,” Persaud posited.
Continuing to plug the force’s success, Persaud said ranks arrested three of the persons who were members of the now dead Rondell ‘Fineman’ Rawlins gang, adding that there are still elements out there who still pose a threat and they also have to face justice for the crimes they have committed.
Robberies
And Persaud said there has been a decrease in gun robberies from 698 to 513 for the same period last year and this year there has been a small increase from 223 to 233 of robberies committed with other instruments. Out of those numbers 206 of the robberies were committed on the streets, 118 in homes, 116 at business places, 54 were of vehicle occupants and nine were committed on the river.
He said the majority of the crimes are committed in Georgetown and its environs and whenever there is “tight control” in this area there will be an impact on the national figures.
Persaud is of the opinion that the quick response of the police which saw all the perpetrators of last year’s GuySuCo payroll robbery being nabbed has put a “dent on organised type of robberies that were occurring.” He said coming out of that robbery the police have maintained river patrols and this has also seen the reduction in robberies committed.
Impacted
“The patrols, quick responses have impacted, crime intelligence [has seen] a lot of wanted persons, a lot of persons involved in these robberies [arrested], information were picked up and acted upon and we were able to dismantle quite a few of these groups…,” Persaud said.
Patrols by community policing groups have also had an impact on the success of the force.
Persaud again cited this newspaper as an example for what he termed as unbalanced reporting, referring to an October 20 editorial that dealt with the number of robberies being committed but which did not mention that the persons were arrested and charged in relation to some of the robberies committed.
A major success for the force was also the arrest of gang members in Berbice. Persaud said the men “worked legitimately by day and then in the nights they pick up guns and they rob people. They would go with cast nets and fish baskets so they put the guns to lie when they see people coming… They were able to successfully operate for a while before they were arrested.”
Two members of a group on the East Bank of Demerara were also arrested and placed before the court by the police.
Persaud briefly mentioned the Island Princess investigation, which has seen the gutted bodies of three of its crew members being found in the river and the vessel ending up in Grenada, but he said because the investigation “is current, it is hot,” he would not say too much.
Drugs
Touching on drugs Persaud noted that most of the marijuana on the market is being grown in Guyana and consumed locally while cocaine is mostly in Guyana for transshipment with a small amount being converted to crack. He said there is no information on heroin being used in Guyana and so all of it is just transshipped through Guyana.
There are several routes through which the cocaine is transshipped with Venezuela being the main transshipment point.
For the year the police have destroyed some 176,373 kilogrammes of marijuana compared to 33,679.86 kilogrammes being destroyed last year and Persaud said the increase is due mainly to joint services cooperation.
There has also been an increase in cocaine seizures on the streets by the police with 22.107 kilogrammes being seized this year as compared to the 9.686 kilogrammes seized last year. One hundred and nineteen persons were charged with trafficking in cocaine this year compared to 90 charged last year.
