Officers of the Guyana Police Force (GPF) should never hesitate to respond to reports of domestic violence, Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall, SC, said during a Gender-Based Violence (GBV) medical symposium held last Sunday at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre.
The symposium was organised by the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security.
A Department of Public Information [DPI] press release quoted the attorney general as saying, “All of us in this room would have heard the complaint when police officers say that the matters are private and that they can’t get involved; that’s completely wrong.” DPI said that Nandlall reminded the gathering that the GPF benefitted from training programmes specifically aimed at educating officers on the Domestic Violence Act.
According to DPI, Nandlall said that the government is in the process of establishing special measures to address this social ill.
“The police have to create units within each police station to deal with domestic violence. We have begun to do this administratively…The reports have to be specially prepared and documented in a particular way,” the attorney general noted.
Each police station, he said, must have an assigned vehicle to swiftly respond to domestic violence complaints.
Nandlall added that he has engaged the Commissioner of Police to initiate lectures for officers in each division to familiarise them with the Family Violence Act of 2024 recently passed in the National Assembly. Nandlall said, according to DPI, that this step is crucial as officers are responsible for operationalising and enforcing the law within society.
DPI further stated that in 2021, the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security launched the Cop Squad 2000 Initiative, to further combat domestic violence. The initiative aimed to train at least 50 per cent of officers on how to handle domestic violence cases.
