In an effort to ensure members of the public are treated appropriately when engaging with the Guyana Police Force (GPF), Minister of Home Affairs, Robeson Benn said surveillance cameras will be installed at all police stations throughout the country.
“So where there is contact between the police and the population, there will be cameras which will be recording those engagements. We are talking the talk about when people come to the police station, how they are treated—whether they are chased out, whether their information is taken down, whether there is a safe space for women who may be suffering domestic abuse or for children who make be having issues under the law,” Benn disclosed during a guest appearance on the weekly webinar “Guyana Dialogue” on Thursday night.
He did not say when the cameras are expected to be installed or whether any has been set up at any police station as yet.
However, he also urged members of the public to use their cellular phones and other devices to record engagements with police officers.
“So if anything goes wrong we can address it, we can correct it and make the necessary changes in attitude and people so we provide service and protection that is solely needed for the population,” Benn said.
Benn made the revelation while he was discussing his vision for GPF, which he said is to “rebuild, rejuvenate and diversify”.
“…I have a strong position where I feel unless we have diverse policing and of course for other agencies too in the fire and prison service, that we won’t arrive to the point of empathy and caring for each other unless we have full participation of various groupings, religions, ethnicities. This would speak perhaps also to even in the interior of the country and particular in the communities,” he explained.
Currently, he said there are a number of studies ongoing about how the force can proceed as it relates to reform. “Other than bringing in a few experts, a lot of training in ongoing both locally and internationally in relation to issues such as domestic violence, the care of juvenile offenders, [and] attitude towards each other,” Benn said.
“Diversity will bring along professionalism, it will bring along the platforms for which we could do the reform of the Guyana Police Force,” he added.
The aim, Benn said, is to make policing professional and not personal. “It’s heavily personalised. It’s very disdainful. Not that they aren’t many good policing but the negatives are sometimes overwhelming, surprisingly, and even ridiculous at times,” he noted.
He further stated that with the new leadership of the GPF, he believes that a new approach will be taken to improve the service to citizens. “It won’t happen overnight… We are moving along the pathway to making things much better,” Benn said.
