The government will be working closely with the Guyana Police Force to ensure that there is a serious approach to tackling the country’s escalating crime situation, according to Minister of State Joseph Harmon who yesterday announced that there is a five-part security strategy in the works to crush this criminal network.
“Criminals have no place or no home… we will go after them relentlessly with every tool, every asset of the state, and that the criminals and their handlers will understand that the state will not sit idly by and allow them to run riot on the streets of this country,” he said during his weekly post cabinet press briefing held yesterday.
On Tuesday, President David Granger chaired a high-level security meeting with the aim of formulating a national plan to effectively tackle the crime situation. Granger viewed such a meeting as a matter of high priority and importance given the almost daily occurrence of violent crimes. There has been a noticeable increase for the past six weeks or so.
Speaking to reporters in the media centre at the Ministry of the Presidency, Harmon, while stressing the state’s resolve to ensure that citizens are safe, said government is sending a clear message to all that “wherever the intelligence lead takes us we are going to follow it and there will be no sacred cows where this matter is concerned.”
Harmon pointed out that the Granger administration has the benefit of the expertise of persons such as criminologists, security experts and persons who would have written extensively on the country’s crime-related issues.
“We are aware that criminals… unless they are like bicycle thieves and so on they have a linkage behind when it comes to certain things and over the years we have had the opportunity of studying these things. We had advised the previous administration on certain aspects of crime and certain aspects of security…,” the minister said.
He pointed out that in the Disciplined Forces Commission (DFC) report there are certain recommendations made that point in “that direction.”
And in what appears to be a direct reference to the recent shooting of businessman Ganesh Ramlall, Harmon said that for gunmen to turn up at the home of a man located not far from a police station and shoot him and jump on a bicycle and ride away “there has to have some kind of complicity in it.”
The four gunmen who waylaid Ramlall in his yard and shot him dead were said to have fled the area on bicycles. The Den Amstel Police Station, according to reports, is located about five minutes from the man’s home but despite being called the police arrived on the scene more than an hour after the shooting, relatives had said.
According to Harmon, for a person to go into a certain community and perform certain criminal acts and walk away or drive away there must be some persons or element behind him.
“Who is providing the getaway car? Who is providing them the access for them to do these things? Who is doing it?” Harmon asked.
He said particularly when it comes to gun crime there is a “linkage backward” and it is “really getting to the backward linkage that helps you with dealing with not just one incident but several incidents that would have taken place.”
Harmon stated that the previous crime fighting tactics looked at symptoms of crime and not the source of items such as guns.
“You can’t be fighting gun crime in the streets of Georgetown and don’t know where the guns coming from because all you are doing is dealing with the symptoms. But there is a bigger issue… and this is why we have sat down with the security people, the police, the army and all of them and we are putting our best brains to this matter so that we can deal with it condignly and in a manner which would basically break the back of crime in this country,” Minister Harmon said.
He pointed out that there are persons who benefit from the criminal acts and as such they cannot just focus on the man on the bicycle riding away with the gun and not look for the person who provided him with the gun and the bicycle.
According to Harmon there has been some attempt at increasing the number of ranks in the Force.
He said that when government reviews the manner in which resources are deployed its view is that there has to be some level of redeployment of the manpower resources of the force. He said government expects that the commissioner, in his proposal to the president on fighting crime, will identify areas of shortfall in manpower and equipment and that once those shortfalls are justified then the resources will be made available. He stressed that it is all about protection and service.
Five-point plan
Harmon said that the crime situation took centre stage at the cabinet meeting held on Tuesday. He said cabinet was briefed by Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan and Granger who had earlier in the day summoned a meeting of the security personnel and defined the outline of a strategy to deal with the upsurge in crime.
Also at that meeting were Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo, Harmon, Ramjattan, Minister of Social Cohesion Amna Ally, Commissioner of Police Seelall Persaud and Deputy Chief of Staff of the Guyana Defence Force Colonel Khemraj Persaud
Harmon informed the media that the President has outlined a draft strategy which Ramjattan will “flesh out and basically refine with the commissioner of police to ensure that the citizens in this country are safe; that the criminals and the criminal underworld and the intellectual authors of criminal activity understand that this government has a very strong resolve to root out crime wherever it exists.”
He said that in this regard government has given “a commitment” to the police force that it will put all of the assets of the state at its disposal to ensure that wherever criminal activity exists it will be rooted out “most viciously.”
Nothing was said about what role the army will play.
According to him, the “overt and covert operation which will have to be undertaken in this matter will be given the full backing of the state.” He informed that the president discussed five aspects of what the overall strategy will entail.
The first element deals with the police administration and the requirement to identify and determine across all ten administrative regions where these criminal acts are being committed and to decide on a strategy to deal with them on a national basis. “It was felt that the high incidence in gun crimes has its genesis in the fact that we shared a very long border with countries that actually produce small arm weapons,” he said. In this regard, government’s strategy will include border control activities and activities involving the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) in relation to the way in which goods and services are imported into the country and how the available instruments for this are used.
The second element has to with the police organisation and training. Harmon pointed out that Ramjattan has already given an undertaking that there will be more policemen on the street. “There was a clear directive to the police that we have to put more policemen on patrol and to remove them out of the offices where they are engaged in non-core functions of the Guyana Police Force.” Harmon emphasized that this element also encapsulates the deployment of ranks, response times to complaints and the operation of the 911 facility; all of which would be subjected to serious review over the next few weeks.
Harmon identified the third element as the issue of illegal firearms in the country and the manner in which it will be dealt with. He noted government’s zero tolerance stance to the use of illegal firearms.
The fourth element has to do with police assets and equipment. “The government has given a clear undertaking to the Guyana Police Force that it will provide the assets to go after criminal activity wherever it exists,” he said. This includes the ability to utilize aircraft and helicopters to overlook certain terrain which includes land and high seas where acts of piracy are being committed. He said the strategy will deal with the utilization of these assets to give the police a greater early warning capability. This element he said also includes the resuscitation of the police marine wing to give ranks greater flexibility and greater access to inland waterways. “Animals… dogs to go after criminals are all going to be part of the strategy.”
The fifth element focuses on significant improvement in police communication using the internet and access to the CCTV cameras. According to Harmon, the police were given the assurance that government is prepared to ensure that the cameras are all across the country; this will aid in the fight against criminal activity. Another feature of this element he said would be the networking of police stations countrywide through internet access.
