The murder of 16-year-old Queen’s College student Neesa Gopaul provided the administration with another opportunity to blame the Guyana Police Force for incompetence.
Minister of Home Affairs Mr Clement Rohee last week led the charge in criticizing the Force over which he has exercised ministerial responsibility for the past four years. His ministry issued a statement disclosing that repeated reports had been made to the Leonora Police Station on the West Coast about the abuse of the deceased and that there was “a failure on the part of the Guyana Police Force to recognise the signals that were emanating from the reports that were made by the teen.”
The statement added, for good measure, that the Ministry of Home Affairs received many complaints regarding police slothfulness and suggested that such behaviour could have fatal consequences for some complainants as in Ms Gopaul’s case.
Blaming the regular police was not enough. Mr Rohee went on to complain about the poor performance of members of community policing groups in ‘D’ Division in West Demerara. He reminded the part-timers that, with respect to the schoolgirl’s abuse and murder, the community police also had a duty to be aware of what was going on in the community and should function as the “eyes and ears” of the Police Force.
Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon joined the blame game. He expressed the Cabinet’s “outrage” over a crime that ought to have been prevented and that could have been “nipped in the bud.” He discovered also that there was “some amount of inertia, indolence, insensitivity [and] abandonment of protocols across the range of entities.” He found that the Sexual Violence Act and other aspects of the criminal law “all failed to operate in the interest of this young child.”
Dr Luncheon suggested that the Gopaul case warranted a full investigation that would allow the administration “to ensure that an incident like this never happens again.” The administration has often been reluctant to conduct independent investigations into security lapses so it remains to be seen whether anything will come from this suggestion.
The search for scapegoats was to be expected. Both Dr Luncheon and Mr Rohee, more than any other administration officials, must be aware of the fact that, although there is no doubt that the Police Force was directly responsible for mishandling the Gopaul case, the underlying causes of police mal-performance have been governmental misdirection and mistakes. Mr Rohee acknowledged that “members of the Police Force were not trained welfare and probation officers.” It is public knowledge also that the Force is 20 per cent below its required operating strength.
Mr Rohee did admit, but only after the girl’s murder, that the Ministry of Home Affairs would aggressively pursue steps to “beef-up” the number of detectives at Criminal Investigation Department. Why only now?
The Police Force is suffering from the consequences of the administration’s bizarre decision to abort the United Kingdom Security Sector Reform Action Plan. The Force is also suffering from ministerial micro-management. The Ministry of Home Affairs has now instructed the Police Force, in the wake of the Gopaul case, to submit “daily” updates on reports of domestic violence, child abuse and sexual offences.
The Police Force needs reform not reproof. Blame for the failure to bring the Force up to its required strength, to erect advanced training institutions and to provide resources in order to effect serious security sector reform over the past eighteen years rests with the political administration.
Dr Luncheon and Mr Rohee should realise that police performance will never improve significantly until those reforms are implemented.