No Guyanese who is even vaguely abreast of the currents that are the basis of critical discourse in our country would have missed (if they had read it) the poignancy of the Stabroek News’ editorial ‘Indefensible’ published in its Thursday October 17 issue, the central theme of which – in the opinion of this writer – is the seeming astonishing indifference of the powers that be to what is now widely felt to be the deeply alarming distancing by the Guyana Police Force from the tenets of its Service and Protection motto.
To go further, not a few observers have expressed the view that the incumbent Minister of Home Affairs, Robeson Benn, is possessed of a far too laid back posture in the matter of issues pertaining to the image of the Force and that his continuing occupancy of one of the most critical, most sensitive Cabinet posts is not, at this time, doing the Force’s Service and Protection motto any great favours. That Minister is far too seemingly possessed of a kind of no big deal posture is not a truism that critical observers can honestly dismiss.
Recent events, more specifically the public reporting on these events, could easily create the impression that the Force is now equipped with the credentials to pretty much do as it pleases, having been granted a ‘free pass’ from adherence to its motto, from lawful accountability. Indeed some of the extant issues that attach themselves to the Force can hardly endure the stare of public scrutiny without withering with shame. It is as if the Force now appears to have been granted a ‘free pass’ from lawful accountability and that, on top of that, there appears to be no serious evidence that the political administration has a particularly healthy appetite for opening its doors to satisfactory scrutiny which is the only means through which the Force’s wholehearted embracing of its motto, ‘Service and Protection,’ or otherwise, can be persuasively determined.
Perhaps the most deeply disturbing assertion in the aforementioned editorial is the revelation that among the revelations bared in Justice Ramlal’s mini survey of just over 300 police officers with rankings from Senior Superintendent to Rural Constable was that there was a distressing lack of familiarity with the Force’s Standing Orders, an absolutely critical tool that is hinged to their execution of law enforcement. Distressingly, this is not the first time Justice Ramlal had expressed that view.
This might well, arguably, be Justice Ramlal’s most shocking discovery since, in essence, it raises the question as to how the Force could possibly discharge its responsibility effectively, even remotely so, in circumstances where they are possessed of no reliable tools with which to do so. Must we then assume that distressingly large numbers of policemen/women are essentially clueless as to how to go about the executions of critical aspects of their substantive job descriptions and (to go further) what is the citizenry to make of this state of affairs?
Equally worrying here is the fact that even in the face of an editorial that so clearly makes the point about the seeming fact that the Police Force may well be positioned at a discomfiting distance from accountability, one does not get the impression that the powers that be are poised at this time to take serious action to salvage what, we can now hardly deny is a Police Force that is under severe pressure to demonstrate that its Service and Protection motto is not now perilously close to becoming altogether discredited.
In the matter of the public image of the Force it appears that we have graduated from those delinquencies like the now ‘worn-down’ Officer-tek-a-bribe culture (confined mostly to ranks on the hustle to which the aforementioned editorial refers) to levels of delinquency that appear to have dragged the upper echelons of the Force into the affray and which (who knows?) may well now place the Force on the precipice of a level of scandal that could very well rock the force to its very foundations.
Here in Guyana the commonplace approach to treating with seamy issues that have to do with the public image of state institutions is simply to try to sweep those issues under a rug. The problem in most instances is that all too often the dust is so thick, so challenging to disperse that the ‘cover down’ option approach becomes acutely challenging, sometimes, well-nigh impossible.
These days we are at a point where ‘police business’ is disseminated through an open sepulchre that customarily yields an astonishing variety of accounts of the various mechanisms through which the Force’s service and protection obligations are dispensed.
Moreover there are those who would argue that a great deal that was said in the aforementioned Stabroek News editorial would appear to be hinged to what appears to be a reluctance to have Justice Ramlal execute his mandate effectively. This is a matter for which the political administration – like it or not – has to carry the can.
Here the mindful observer may well contend that where the modus operandi of the police is concerned the Force is, these days, hardly if ever ‘tagged’ for the well-known habits associated with (for example) traffic administration. Those have now become ‘lesser matters’, the police, it is widely felt, having moved on to what one might call more ‘high end hustles’ that are believed to be both much more organized, more discreet more lucrative and extending way outside the realm of what had always been regarded as the relatively ‘minor’ officer-tek-a-bribe hustle. These days, it is believed, the ‘shakedowns’ go much higher up.
Worryingly, there exists, as well, the notion that the widely believed incremental indiscretions that are attributed to the Force may well have come to be seen as an occupational hazard of the task of policing itself so that it comes to be seen as, perhaps, the seamy side of an assignment in which the ends justify the means.
Worryingly, we now live in a condition where the GPF is now seen in some quarters as functioning in a condition of ‘capture,’ and that it has long ‘graduated’ from the Officer Tek a Bribe caricature which, one felt, was an optional expression for the popular lef a raise practice linked primarily, though not exclusively to traffic-related and other perceived less serious offences. Here it has to be said that ‘back then,’ few people might have thought that the ‘ailment’ would have made its way this far up the food chain. The reality is that this is what appears to be happening. Unfortunately the practice now appears to be leaving unsightly stains on the ‘higher ups’ that have become difficult to remove.