On the evening of Friday May 5th, outside MovieTowne, bystanders and a wider audience that ‘joined in’ courtesy of ‘candid’ cellphone cameras, witnessed a sustained assault on an on-duty policemen by two men, the brazen openness of which would have shocked those who witnessed the occurrence, either directly or electronically.
It was one of those occurrences that sharply underscored the erosion of public order in Guyana as manifested in a protracted assault on lawful authority and a patent failure on the part of law enforcement to push back the phenomenon. Worryingly, it is a phenomenon to which sizeable sections of the citizenry appear to be pointedly indifferent. This, to say the least, ought to be deeply worrying to a society presumably in the throes of a hoped-for positive transition.
It would be a good thing if we were to be kept abreast of the physical recovery of the assaulted policeman and if his commendable effort to defend himself could be publicly acknowledged.
The sight of a policeman being set upon and beaten by two assailants in the full view of ordinary citizens while cellphones swing into action to effect a much larger dissemination of the occurrence would likely have traumatized a great many of our citizens. From the perspective of that wider audience the occurrence would have, in a great many instances, put a worrisome exclamation point on the way we live. It is not just the level of the lawlessness that the occurrence exemplified but what now appears to be a general acceptance of the reality that unbridled public lawlessness has now carved out a formidable monument to its ‘legitimacy.’ This is something that the powers that be will have to think about, seriously, even as we seek to use our ‘oil wealth’ to secure the wider global legitimacy that we have been fervently seeking, over time.
Truth be told, the firm grip which all sorts of variants of lawlessness have visited upon us has derived, in large measure, from what has been a wholly inadequate pushback of law enforcement, and, as well, a whole range of unchallengeable instances of law-enforcement functionaries being, themselves, part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
In a sense, some aspects of the public response to the recent vicious assault on the policeman reflected, somehow, a sense of acceptance that such occurrences have, these days, become par for the course in a society where the balance of power may be shifting in favour of the loose and the lawless. Indeed, the seeming overwhelming weakness of both the official response and the wider public one to these transgressions would appear to give credence to the popular view tha the lawlessness and dysfunctional behaviour is continuing to gain ground. Who can seriously challenge the fact that there are, these days, worryingly sizeable chunks of the populace that appear to have capitulated to the lure of lawlessness.
That the assault on the hapless policeman descended to the level of a public spectacle to be caught on camera and more widely disseminated is, as well, reflective of what has become a voracious appetite for the sensational, whatever the nature of the ‘news.’ Can we honestly challenge the view that the wider dissemination of the incident was a function of what was felt to be the importance of attracting a much larger audience to the theatre of what, unquestionably, degrades our society as a whole? Here, indeed, is a reflection of the fact of contemporary communication technology not at all serving us well.
Truth be told – and both the Force and the government as a whole demonstrate a reluctance to accept it – the powers of the police are circumscribed by what is now a widespread and ingrained view that when it comes to effective law enforcement the police, frequently, are its own worst enemy. Who amongst us would robustly deny the validity of that view?
What transpired outside the MovieTowne establishment at Turkeyen two Fridays ago sums up some of the formidable ‘demons’ that continue to ‘haunt’ the GPF, from its lack of sufficient ‘authority’ to rein in (far less push back) crime, to the reality, in all too many instances, that the Force, or rather, elements therein, are considered part of the problem rather than part of the solution. This points not just to the lawlessness and bravado of the duo that set upon a policeman executing his duties, but, as well, to what, these days, is a seemingly resigned acceptance of the reality that the ramparts of law enforcement are being stormed by forces that appear determined to take them down altogether.
Here we must ask ourselves whether the “outraged” response of the Commissioner of Police and the threat of the policeman’s attackers having to face “the full brunt of the law” will have even the slightest remedial impact in circumstances where it is now widely felt that rogue elements in the Force have long compromised the institution and rendered it vulnerable to the kind of outrageous ‘eye pass’ as is reflected in the recent brazen assault on the on-duty policeman witnessed by what, in some instances, might well have been shocked, even traumatized bystanders whose perception of law enforcement and what it means would have been eroded in an instant.
The recent shooting at a police prosecutor is also another chilling example of the lawlessness that confronts the force and the public.
It is now in the hands of the authorities to put an impactful exclamation point on this deeply disturbing and utterly shameful trend.