There has been no let-up in the spate of armed robberies in the city. It is not just the armed robberies on business places, their owners and customers ‒ many of them in broad daylight ‒ that is of concern, it is the intrusion into those spaces where it would never occur to the public that they might be at risk from gunmen. But nowadays, it seems, one has to think twice not just before one goes to the corner shop, but before one goes to the hospital or the dentist. Monday last week was the classic case, where there was a cluster of at least five armed robberies or attempted robberies on the one day. Commissioner of Police (ag) put these down to the confluence of big entertainment events such as Jamzone, and told the media that whenever these are on the calendar, the crime rate goes up. The police would respond, he said, by increasing their patrols, particularly in the capital.
Citizens could be forgiven for being somewhat cynical about whether that will really make very much difference; after all, armed robberies have been with us for a long time and earlier measures have not had much impact on the problem. Of course, the police are insistent that the rate is down from last year, and based on the statistics, therefore, they can claim they are making headway. Even if this is so (and there is no geographical or category breakdown to indicate whether this is across the board or localized) as far as the inhabitants of Georgetown are concerned, they are no safer than they used to be.
Reams have been written about the causes of our crime problem, both underlying and proximate, and it is of course true that to make any long-lasting impact various aspects would have to be addressed. Having said that, however, many people would agree that two of the factors which have made the society far more violent than it used to be are drugs and firearms. The two flow almost unhindered across our borders (where assault rifles in particular are concerned, the two trades are directly connected) and there is now this unholy marriage between criminal users of drugs and firearms. Some years ago then Commissioner of Police Henry Greene said he thought that most of the Taurus handguns which were coming into the country had originated in Brazil. The drugs, of course, have various points of entry, particularly to the west.
The point is, a number of drug addicts, especially if they are looking for their next fix are uninhibited by a conscience or the considerations which constrain the rest of us. Violence means nothing to them and neither do they care about consequences. And if guns are easily available – which they are – they will use them. The number of casual murders in the course of robberies is alarming, nearly all of them in circumstances where for the specific purpose of theft, no one needed to be killed at all.
The police have made various noises over the years about tackling the gun trade and the business of guns for hire, but these could hardly be described as an overwhelming success. Even if the traders and operators of guns for hire along the coast were to be arrested, it would not eliminate the trade for long; the source of the problem is the open back door of Guyana’s borders. The government has never crafted anything approaching a comprehensive hinterland security policy, let alone invested the kind of resources which would be required to implement meaningful measures, but until it gets a grip on the borders and the interior, nothing much is going to change. Even if police patrols in the city have a temporary effect, the armed robberies will simply shift location.
As for the drugs, Guyana is awash with Drug Master Plans and the like, but there has been no diminution in the flow of narcotics into this country. The excuse has always been that Guyana lacks the resources to have any impact on the drug trade, but even if that were the case there is no policy or even systematic attempt to deal with drug-use within the country. Going into some of Guyana’s villages the residents will sometimes complain about the lack of recreation for the young people – no playing field, for example, or one that needs rehabilitating. Quite often they will add that the youths take to ‘smoking’ drugs because there is nothing much for them to do.
It has to be conceded that the education system is not what it once was long ago, and there are a lot of undereducated or plain uneducated young people up and down the coast with no particular career expectations in this new globalized universe of ours. They are the ones most at risk of falling into temptation, more particularly if the main recreations on offer are drugs and alcohol. The problem is that ‘fixing’ education is a long-term exercise.
But what prevents the authorities from mounting the kind of campaign against drug use they have undertaken against cigarettes? Certainly there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of people who smoke, and cigarette smoking is not even an illegal activity. What stops them organizing a series of sophisticated campaigns directed at young people (those in school can be captured easily) utilizing the assistance of former addicts, and illuminated by success stories in other places? The emphasis would not so much be on the illegal character of narcotics ‒ which might have an appeal for some youths ‒ as its danger to health.
There is another area in particular where the government has been derelict, and that is in drug rehabilitation. The two programmes which currently are directed towards weaning addicts off drugs and working towards their rehabilitation are those run by the Salvation Army and the Phoenix Recovery Project. Both receive subventions from the government, although Phoenix receives a very modest sum indeed, even although it is the only one which caters for women as well as men. Subventions or no, those who are admitted to the programmes are usually charged a fee, because the cost of rehabilitation is not cheap. This in itself limits the number and range of people who can take advantage of their services.
In a country like this, one might have thought, where young people for a variety of reasons are so at risk, the government should have been ploughing money into drug rehabilitation so even those who cannot afford it will have access to it. One might have thought that taking addicts off the streets, so that those who might otherwise be tempted can resist the lure of joining criminal gangs, would be in the government’s interest. It would certainly be in the interest of the rest of society, not to mention the former users themselves.
