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POLICE REFORM
For the longest while, the Guyana Police Force (GPF) has come in for a sustained barrage of criticism from all quarters over its alleged failure to carry out its mission, summarised in its motto – “To Protect and Serve”.
The Ministers of Home Affairs, who exercise executive authority over the GPF during that time, have also received their share of brickbats. This unremitting negativity has to have acted to corrode the confidence of the serving members of the Force.
For this reason, their recent success against some of the most notorious members of the gang that has been terrorising the country at large and thumbing their noses at the law enforcement establishment in particular, must be lauded.
To the ordinary citizen, the GPF is the most visible and ubiquitous institution in the law and order arena. The recent promise by its top echelons to maintain a heightened presence in Georgetown and the East Coast in the upcoming Christmas season is a vivid reminder of the linchpin role it plays in holding the sinews of the society together.
What has not been appreciated enough by those same ordinary citizens is that while the GPF has its share of rotten apples among its membership, the reasons why it has been better able to fulfil its mandate have been more systemic than dependent on the idiosyncrasies of its personnel.
It is in this period of heightened appreciation for the sterling efforts of the GPF that we believe we must return the issue of its reform to the front burner. To some, especially from within the Force, it may have appeared that the several inquiries into its operations over the last two decades were knee-jerk reactions to the burgeoning crime wave, designed to pass the buck by blaming the GPF.
While this may have been the intent of some, the reports themselves, especially the Disciplined Forces Report (DFR) that was tabled to Parliament in 2004, went far beyond finger pointing and identified the structural bases of why the GPF has been unable to contain crime.
For one, all the reports highlight the fact that the demands on the GPF have changed dramatically from the days of its formation when it was designed to suppress a colonised society.
This orientation was maintained by the previous regime and it ought to surprise no one that the authoritarian predisposition in the GPF’s interactions with the populace survives into the present.
This stubborn persistence in basic orientation is a prime example to illustrate why mere tinkering with the orders of the force is not enough to create a modern GPF that can rise to the present challenges.
It is not our intention to go into detail as to what may be necessary for a complete overhaul of the force: we simply want to emphasise that we cannot avoid it, just to resume wringing our hands when the next eruption in crime hit us in the face.
The nature of crime and its perpetrators have changed irrevocably by this new millennium and we do the GPF a disservice by not executing what is necessary for it to face those new challenges effectively.
We simply refer once again to the DFR, with its one hundred and sixty-four recommendations, that seems to have dropped into a black hole somewhere in Parliament.
The Government and Opposition have both lauded introduction of special and sitting committees in that venerable institution where consensus was supposed to be hammered out on critical issues facing the nation.
What could be more critical than the re-organisation of the vanguard-institution that is deployed in the fight against crime? In the heat of the several massacres earlier in the year, we were regaled about the specific recommendations embedded in the DFR that could have enabled the Forces to be more effective if they had been implemented. Why the silence now?
We cannot afford to become complacent because of the recent successes by the GPF. The allegations of corruption and torture by the members of the GPF and the unexplained deaths of individuals while in Police custody are only some of the troubling symptoms, other than the apprehension of criminals, which highlight the underlying systemic malaise in the GPF. Reform of the GPF cannot be sidelined.
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