The announcement of Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon last February that the administration was constructing a building to be used as an intelligence unit in the compound of Castellani House on Vlissengen Road sparked a controversy.
Aesthetes were infuriated at the prospect of co-locating a national intelligence agency with the National Art Gallery. One political party asked whether the proposed agency would concentrate its efforts “on spying on citizens of Guyana, including the political opponents of the government, under the guise of increasing its security efforts?”
President Bharrat Jagdeo responded “We don’t have any desire to spy on political opponents or ordinary citizens.” In fact, in June 2002 soon after criminal violence erupted on the East Coast, he had promised to undertake “A comprehensive reform of the Intelligence Sector” to strengthen intelligence-gathering capability to fight against crime, narco-trafficking and threats to internal security.”
The President told police officers last February that the security forces’ crime-fighting efforts must be “intelligence-driven… We are creating an intelligence agency that will support the police, particularly in their fight against crime… If you agree to have an ‘intelligence-led’ law enforcement effort or to shift the focus to ‘intelligence-led,’ you have to deliver the tools – legislative and intelligence tools.”
The President’s use of the expression ‘intelligence-led’ policing was borrowed from the British police which introduced the concept in the early 1990s. ‘Intelligence-led’ policing in Britain was applied as a technique of crime control that was “built around analysis and management of problems and risks, rather than reactive responses.” It meant that, rather than responding to individual crimes as they occurred, the police would act proactively to perceived risks. They would deploy their resources “to identify and to ‘target’ offenders, locations or activities that appeared to present a sufficient level of threat” to warrant attention.
The President explained that there will be widespread use of closed-circuit television cameras in the new intelligence agency. He expected that “The police will have available to them all of these images [from the CCTV cameras]. They will be able to analyse the data coming in and then create actionable intelligence not only to solve crime but also to prevent crime.”
Two British police officers came here in March 2008 to train Guyanese police officers, perhaps as a result of the intention to adopt this ‘intelligence-led’ technique. Their mission was to help to develop crime intelligence, advise on structures, provide training and conduct a needs analysis for establishing a new, expanded Criminal Intelligence Unit as part of the Guyana-United Kingdom Security Sector Reform Action Plan. After a promising start, however, the Guyana Government scuttled the British Reform Plan and decided on a ‘do-it-yourself’ approach. Dr Luncheon pledged that the cost of security reform would be borne “from public funds from the Government of Guyana.”
The local DIY approach raises three problems. First is that ‘intelligence-led’ policing, obviously, is a professional policing technique. The responsible agency should be fully under police control and located in Eve Leary, Kingston, conveniently close to the Police Headquarters and the Criminal Investigation Department. Locating it 100 metres from the Office of the President inevitably raises fears about ‘political-led’ interference.
Second is that, the deliberate discontinuation of the British Security Sector Reform Plan and the intelligence training that went with it, will challenge untrained and inexperienced local analysts to produce reliable intelligence. Finally, the President’s faith in CCTV camera images might be misplaced. The cameras will be far away from the real sources and scenes of serious crime – narco-trafficking, gun-running, contraband-smuggling banditry and piracy.
It is conceivable that, in its proposed form, this intelligence initiative might not have the outcomes that the administration anticipates.