On Thursday last, at the Annual Police Officers’ Conference, President David Granger returned to the now patently familiar theme of police reform, outlining elements of his vision for the Guyana Police Force, going forward. Much of the essence of what he had to say sought to underscore the importance of creating a nexus between the particular policing challenges facing the country and the need to have a Force capable of responding effectively to those challenges.
If the President’s perspective as to what constitutes a Police Force that covers all of its bases insofar as law enforcement is concerned is taken account of, then it is evident that the Force, in its present state, is some distance away from being so equipped. For example, his presentation sought to cover the conventional bases in the Force’s eternal struggle to stay on top of those crimes with which we have long been familiar, whilst alluding to some of the more recent challenges, arguably the most challenging of which derives from the steady stream of refugee Venezuelans into Guyana and the attendant new policing challenges that this development poses.
For example, his point about there now being more Venezuelan refugees/migrants in Guyana than there are policemen in our Police Force is as sobering as it is unsettling, particularly since trans-border migration anywhere in the world usually brings all sorts of security and crime-related challenges with it.
Arising out of his point about the movement of refugee Venezuelans into Guyana and the various other challenges associated with interior policing is of course the issue of having two squads to cover the hinterland and the coast, respectively. The ‘two squad’ perspective will, one assumes, have significant implications for the administrative arrangements within the Force to say nothing about the need for an accelerated level of recruitment and training to get the numbers up to what will be required. An important point that should not be overlooked here has to do with the President’s observation that cross-border migration amounts, in effect to a game-changer, as far as Guyana’s policing arrangements are concerned and that what presently constitutes a Guyana Police Force will not ‘cut it’ as far as effectively policing the entire country is concerned.
Setting aside the consideration of cross-border migration there are also the security challenges that could (hopefully these will not affect Guyana in the manner that they have affected similarly-appointed countries) arise out of what is widely believed to be the oil and gas-related socio-economic transformation that will take place and which, it is felt, will attract ‘all sorts,’ so to speak.
Setting aside these structural and logistical arrangements envisaged in a ‘reformed’ Police Force equipped to respond adequately to current and foreseeable law and order challenges, it can be argued that changes in these areas are likely to go nowhere unless they are accompanied by a Force that will, simultaneously benefit from the highest quality of strategic and administrative acumen at the various tiers of leadership since, as the President has said previously, workable police reform goes beyond simply throwing material resources at the Force.
This is where (assuming of course that the material resources are forthcoming to implement a policing plan on the ground) that the Force could be seriously challenged. It is the easiest thing in the world to assume that the availability of material resources means ‘job done.’ Nothing can be further from the truth. Frankly, there are those who would argue that strategic thinking has been, for several years, the Achilles Heel of the Force and that this is reflected in its assorted crime-fighting weaknesses. One makes this point in order to make an even more important one, that is, that the matter of police reform has to be addressed within the framework of a strategic plan that tackles, a priori, among other things, the question of leadership that possesses a macrocosmic understanding of the mission of the Force, as much from a law-enforcement perspective as from a crime-fighting one.
At the levels of both the leadership and the ranks of the Police Force, one important thing that has to be borne in mind is that in the period ahead new types of law-enforcement considerations will arise so that (as the President himself has pointed out) it will not simply be a question of responding to those challenges that we currently have in front of us but also taking account of those which, based on current and evolving circumstances, are certain to come along…and in some instances, sooner rather than later.
In the matter of hinterland policing, for example, it is the limited strategic effort that has been made over the decades to (incrementally) upgrade our interior policing capabilities (based on realities that would have been apparent to our security analysts long ago) that now places us in a situation that may well have real national security implications in the foreseeable future. It is to this consideration, it seems, that the President was alluding when he made his “two squads” assertion at last week’s Officers’ Conference.
Two further related points merit mention here. The first has to do with the fact that the issues raised in the President’s address to the Officers Conference serve as a reminder of the ponderous pace at which police reform is moving when set against the note of urgency, if not emergency, struck by the President in his address. That, frankly, is a matter of particular concern at this juncture.
Perhaps more than anything else, what the President had to say sought to draw attention to the fact that with the passage of time the issue of slow police reform, given some of what appears to lie ahead for Guyana, is assuming proportions of a national emergency since, based on everything that we know, a Police Force in its present state could, through its strictly limited effectiveness, seriously injure the country’s developmental ambitions, going forward. Both the tone and content of the President’s address to the Officers’ Conference point to the fact that he is altogether aware of this.
