Commissioner of Police Henry Greene, at least twice every year at the Guyana Police Force’s Annual Officers’ Conference in February or March and the Force’s Anniversary Awards Ceremony in July, would choose to disclose a few choice statistics on crime to the public.
Delivering his feature address to this year’s awardees last week, Mr Greene, by his own admission, declared his intention to state the “positives” and gave an assessment that “crime is down.” As proof, he concluded there had been a 13 per cent decrease in crimes compared to 2009.
Stating that 70 persons have been murdered, that four persons were killed by the police and that traffic deaths were “on par” with the same period last year should not be a source of satisfaction or a cause for congratulation. Nor did his disclosure that 86 members of the Force had been interdicted from duty and faced criminal charges and that his Office of Professional Responsibility was investigating complaints against another 63 inspire confidence.
The public is at a disadvantage because regular, realistic reports or statistics about serious and petty crime are not published. When the Commissioner says that “crime is down” nobody knows for sure what he means.
Mr Greene iterated his usual two complaints. First was that the Force was more than 700 persons, or about 20 per cent, under strength. He then added, as if providing a pre-emptive explanation in response to articles in the press about unsolved crimes, “We can’t solve every crime.”
The Commissioner’s other grouse was about unfavourable press coverage. He complained that the Force has been “targeted” by the media for slight mistakes and its hard work has been ignored. He griped “it is almost like a policeman cannot make a mistake. Like you are God-like or Christ-like and that you can’t make a mistake.” The fact is that members of the Force make many mistakes and that is why so many of them face criminal charges. It is in the public interest that the press should be a watchdog, rather than a lapdog, to the Police Force.
Mr Greene referred to two recent publications – one involving a judge which he considered a “small issue” and another in which the police were accused of investigating a matter poorly. But these cases were neither small not isolated. There have been several egregious examples.
In one case in which a murder accused was set free, Justice William Ramlal said pointedly that “the investigators in this particular case displayed what can be described as pure incompetence and nothing else.” In another case in which other murder accused were set free, Justice Roxane George pointed to the fact that there had been no identification parade and no general description of either accused given by the witness in court. She came to the conclusion that “poor investigation was done by police.” These are serious indictments of the quality of police work.
Mr Greene steers clear of mentioning, even slightly, the ghastly piracy attacks in coastal waters, the wave of violence against women, the surge of gun crimes, the persistence of narco-trafficking and the rampant lawlessness in the hinterland where several persons were killed this year. In the cases of the assassination of Mr Satyadeow Sawh, a Minister of the Government and of the Lindo Creek massacre, the public is not satisfied with the police story that these crimes were committed by men who are all dead.
The Commissioner is free to dole out cash rewards to members of the Police Force as he likes. He is not free to cherry-pick crime rates and to dole out to the public factoids which are at variance with reality.
