I’m supposed to be the “outside” son of a late “Ole Police” Joe Fenty. Many other senior relatives now also deceased, were also members of the B.G. Police Force. (I can personalise this relationship to the point of now revealing that my first two pairs of “Long Pants” – 56 years ago – were made from Joe Fenty’s Police serge!)
Thus I’ve always essayed to support our local good police in these columns. I wrote about past Commissioners as often as I’ve berated “bad cops” and have quoted Lloyd Barker who had constantly reminded concerned citizens that: “often we don’t get the top achievers, our recruits are what we get from the ordinary society out there.”
Modern-day criminality in Guyana is as structured an enterprise – to wit organised top-level narco-trafficking or executive white-collar corruption and theft – as it is fed with weaponry in the hands of both the experienced and the youth. It follows therefore that our current police force and service has to be adept at and with both new technology and old-fashioned grass-roots/informant-contacts on the streets and in the villages.
As an aside, let me “preach” that the much-needed, police-community relationship(s) are often compromised by new values wherein the villager, the mother of a thief, the hinterland border resident(s), the get-rich-quick-without toiling youth(s) too often will not co-operate with good committed law enforcement, pleading either fear or “poverty”. And good God-fearing citizens know not whether to trust the Station Sergeant or his subordinates when/if they supply vital “confidential” information about crooks and schemes.
Which brings me to the issues of crooked/rogue cops. I’ll always remember the late Ombudsman Winston Moore, acting as a prosecutor saying “many young men join the force merely to get in among the runnings!”)
Bad Cops, Good Cops – at the Gate
Whilst the late Mr Moore could have had a point about miscreant recruits, there are young Guyanese who wanted to promote the rule of law by genuinely embracing law enforcement.
However, I submit that too many young policemen and ladies succumbed to the subculture of mischief they eventually encountered- at the top or immediately above them whether in the villages, as traffic cops on the street or operating through the fraud squad or narcotics branch. A young constable knows or reads about executive corruption being seemingly, the norm. Besides the politicians he knows of the poor examples set even by certain past senior cops. If he was short of integrity – and cash- he joined the ranks of the Rogue/Hustler Cops.
Cancerous attitudes bred and nurtured over past decades will take long to be reformed or cured. Our whole society becomes victims when our police are as crooked as our criminals. Just witness the weekly parade of serving members and former cops being fingered in serious wrong-doing. It becomes frightening somehow though, there are always more good cops than suspect ranks. We hear of the good professionals investigating and prosecuting the errant misfits- their very “own”.
And last week there were the good guards at the Eve Leary Gates. Their vigilance resulted in the arrest of “their own” who allegedly was dealing with a suspect AK-47. Let our hope spring eternal. Grant the Good Cops reasonable salaries like the (junior) Ministers, house lots and appropriate conditions to keep them “good.”
Congress- Place Parking Meters?
As a current “fan” of American politics I appreciate how top ranking leaders under scrutiny and fire there, quickly manufacture distractions to “pivot” the spotlight of revelations away from them.
Is that what Mr Jagdeo is doing? When he speculates that the municipal manoeuvrings around the Parking Meter project in the Capital City has origins or genesis in the People’s National Congress’ (PNC) Congress Place H.Q? Naughty Mr Jagdeo! But wait! Because perception can be more powerful and persuasive than reality, some letter-writers are coming up with some very provocative enquiries. A la Bharrat!
In the Kaieteur News last week writers posited: (1) That City Hall’s Oscar Clarke is PNC General Secretary; (2) the Madam Mayor of GT is a top “PNC Comrade” as is the Finance Man at MCC. They all journeyed to Mexico. Did not the PNC General Secretary brief fully his Party Leader- the Brigadier President?
And I suspect that one former (smart official of the Parking Meter Investors (Smart [alec] City Solutions) would know where and how this new little outfit acquired its $10M US Capital. He is Mr Ifa K Cush, known to me as Roy Alexander Cush who once worked for the PNC’s New Nation Newspaper when I frequented there decades ago.
So no doubt all these PNC “connections” have given rise to those perceptions and speculations. But would even a PNC agree to those original agreements in that original dastardly contract? Ow!
Reflect, then Ponder…
Chinese investments welcome. At the expense of our national integrity? And patrimony?
Amidst the GECOM Chairman imbroglio: “The Chairman must be fulltime engaging in no other form of employment.” Did this always hold true?
Coming: The rule of law and the role, the power of judges.
Congress Place might very well tell Freedom House that it was within their 23 years that cocaine trafficking in and from Guyana reached its zenith.
The vendors would welcome the New Mall which could arise from the Old Stabroek Co-op Bank Building
’Til next week!
