The Guyana Police Force observed its 171st anniversary last Thursday in the midst of deepening public concern about the collapsing standards of personal and professional conduct of its members.
Even as Assistant Commissioner Stephen Merai was brought down from New Amsterdam to take ceremonial command of the anniversary parade in Georgetown, a bizarre murder-suicide at Spring-lands police station rocked the Berbice ‘B’ Division which he commands. The Assistant Superintendent in charge of the station shot dead a constable with a service revolver and then shot himself.
Before this latest horror, the continuing high incidence of police misconduct and crimes had cast a pall over the celebratory anniversary atmosphere. Earlier this year at the Force’s Annual Officers’ conference, Police Commissioner Henry Greene himself lamented that the Public Relations Department had recorded 199 official complaints in 2009, compared to 178 in 2008. So far, it seems that 2010 will be a record-breaking year for complaints.
The usually amicable Executive of the Police Association, concerned over the spate of abuses – including brutality, use of excessive force, collusion and complicity in armed robbery – allegedly committed by members of the Force, was obliged to issue a statement condemning “the actions of those members who are involved in any form of lawlessness and criminality.” Statements, however, will not stop the rot.
In ‘A’ Division, a city magistrate imposed a fine on an Assistant Superintendent who was involved in a traffic accident after he pleaded guilty plea to a charge of driving under the influence of alcohol. In another case, two policemen were charged with fraudulently imitating an identification mark after they allegedly helped to forge a licence plate number for an unlicensed foreign vehicle at Lethem in the Rupununi.
Again in ‘B’ Division, a constable who was stationed at the Central Police Station in New Amster-dam and his accomplice were charged with robbery and possession of narcotics after they allegedly entered a home under the pretext that they were searching for illicit drugs but stole cash and jewellery.
In ‘C’ Division, senior police officers were obliged to apologise to a businessman for the “sloppy” response to a report of armed robbery at his home at Clonbrook. Several calls to the Clonbrook Police Outpost and other emergency numbers were fruitless after gunmen terrorised the occupants and escaped with cash and other articles. Earlier in June in ‘D’ Division, a policeman, responding to a schoolyard incident, allegedly shot dead a 16-year-old boy at close range. Later that month, a Georgetown-based sergeant and two accomplices were arrested after they allegedly committed an armed robbery at Unity, Parika.
At Bartica in ‘E’ & ‘F’ Division, a cadet officer dressed in plain clothes who was prevented from entering a nightclub without paying returned to the police station where he donned his uniform. He returned to the club along with three other policemen, arrested the 69-year-old the father of the owner of the club who was flung to the ground, kicked and trampled. In a subsequent community meeting, residents of the township recounted experiences of brutality, corruption, harassment, victimisation and lack of investigation by the police there. Miners also complained of being repeatedly “shaken down” by policemen for gold as an inducement for dropping charges for crimes and misdemeanours.
The Police Force has serious problems. The Minister of Home Affairs and the Commissioner of Police need to realise that their last-century methods of manipulation will never bring internal indiscipline under control. There has to be holistic reform of the Force if police officers’ personal and professional conduct is to improve.
