Dear Editor,
Recently two senior ranks of the Guyana Police Force made headline news.
One is a retired Assistant Commissioner whose surname begins with letter ‘A.’ The other is a serving Senior Superintendent, acting Deputy Commissioner Law Enforcement. His surname begins with letter ’B’.
The retired Assistant Commissioner whose name is Kevin Adonis has been charged with conspiring to steal over $19 million from the Guyana Police Force.
Adonis was promoted from Senior Superintendent to the rank of Assistant Commissioner during the Granger administration.
He superseded Blanhum, Budhram, Watts and others. He was posted as Commander to Region One. His official date of retirement was March 1, 2020.
The other senior officer whose name is Wendell Blanhum is currently the Crime Chief. One of his recent predecessors went off under a cloud of suspicion for corruption.
A Crime Chief in the Guyana Police Force usually holds the official rank of a Deputy Commissioner of Police. Blanhum is yet to be appointed to that position. His promotion is among those caught up in the pending list of promotions yet to be resolved. Blanhum has the potential to become one day, the Commissioner of Police of this country. Unless he supersedes others, he has to wait until 2024. He will be 44 years of age by that time.
Blanhum was removed from the senior position as acting Deputy Commissioner Law Enforcement during the Granger administration and exiled to Region One with Orders to report to Adonis who had superseded him. Adonis was the Commander, Blanhum was a Senior Superintendent.
With the change of government in August 2020, Blanhum was reinstated as acting Deputy Commissioner Law Enforcement at the rank of Senior Superintendent.
He recently graduated from the University of Guyana with a Bachelor’s of Law Degree (LLB).
At this point readers would have noticed the huge difference between A and B.
Adonis was not among the first come first in the GPF served with charges of malfeasance.
Ironically, Adonis was among the senior ranks who sat and heard his then Commander-in-Chief (CIC) lecture the February 2018 Annual Police Officers Conference about corruption in the GPF.
In retrospect, Granger’s speech to men like Adonis was like ‘throwing water on a duck’s back.’
Paradoxically, a month later, Granger declared he wanted ‘unbribable’ senior officers in the GPF.
Unbridled corruption in the Force is illustrated in the following headlines:
‘Criminality and corruption in the police force’ (S/N May 2019); ‘Cops in handcuffs on various charges’ (GC May 2019); ‘Crime Chief placed on leave pending corruption probe’ (S/N June 2019); ‘Police corruption and sex in the office’ (K/N June 2019); ‘SWAT Head dismissed from force over whisky find’ (S/N January 2020); ‘Corruption in the Guyana Police Force’ (K/N February 2020); ‘Cops accused of taking millions to duck charges over sub-machine gun, ammo.’ (S/N February 2020); ‘GRA probing smuggled alcohol in police vehicle in Region 9’ (Demerara Waves December 2020).
Adonis therefore was not among the first come nor first served with charges for what some call scamming, fraud, bribe taking, smuggling or conspiring to steal – all euphemisms for corruption. Nor will he be the last.
People tend to ask what did you do about it while you were there? The short and direct answer is; like my predecessors, efforts were made, but since corruption has been eating away at the sinews of the police force for years and is probably now down to the bone of the organization, my own view is, efforts at police reform will succeed only when the force itself wants to be reformed and not when others want them to, as has been the case in the past.
Yours faithfully,
Clement J. Rohee
Former Minister of Home Affairs