Dear Editor,
Looking at the attitudes of our leaders I’ve started to wonder if they care about our thoughts, ideas or advice, etc. Because of our crime situation in Guyana I’ve penned numerous letters advising on the best type of security system to look for, the proper installation of security cameras and setting the DVR to get the best quality of video, etc. Some letters were written during the time of the previous administration, and I extracted some info from these and reused it in other letters under this administration, hoping that they would take my advice and see if it could assist them.
Amazingly, whilst looking at the newscast on Tuesday an item caught my attention. It was reported that the authorities were seeking international assistance to recover lost/ deleted footage from the DVR they recovered from the home of one drug suspect in the recent Zeelugt drug bust. I could recall stating that there are various programmes to enhance video footage/images, mainly video editing and graphics programmes. Walk into any police station and look at the wanted bulletins, and chances are that most of the wanted persons in the pictures are not recognizable.
Editor, there are many programmes available online that could be used to retrieve deleted data from hard drives, memory/storage cards, etc, and some could be purchased which are costly. What boggles my mind is why they are turning to international assistance when they could have done the same here. And more interestingly, why was it announced to the media? I am aware that media personnel have their methods/sources for getting information but is it wise to broadcast such information? My view is that the future perpetrators of crimes could easily get a new hard drive and keep it as a standby and when they commit crimes they could easily exchange the hard drive and destroy the ones with incriminating evidence. Then again, some might not even want their neighbour’s surveillance cameras to be covering anywhere close to them. That’s just smart.
Yours faithfully,
Sahadeo Bates