Traffic police accuse city police of collusion with Route 32 buses

Apr 09, 2009 News

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A senior officer in the ‘A’ Division Traffic Department and a high level City Constabulary rank are at odds, following the arrest of several Route 32 (Georgetown/Parika) minibus operators and the subsequent impounding of their vehicles.
Deputy Superintendent in charge of Traffic, ‘A’ Division, John Daniels, and the Assistant Superintendent of the City Constabulary, Stephen Bailey, have taken separate stances concerning the crackdown on ‘hot plate’ minibuses on Tuesday night, last.
The minibuses remained at the police station all day yesterday.  According to Daniels, the police moved on the minibuses after receiving several complaints, among which were that the minibuses were not occupying their designated park. The minibuses were apparently ‘running the hot plate’ and circling the Stabroek Market area and picking up passengers, instead of waiting and loading in their designated park.
Supt. Daniels said that the complaints came from both commuters and business entities in the Stabroek Square area. “They are complaining that the route 32 buses are always in the habit of going and collecting and setting down passengers (in areas where they are not designated to). There is a park for them behind the fire station,” said Daniels.
He made it clear that the minibuses are supposed to load and offload their passengers in the designated minibus parks.
“They will keep spinning (around the Stabroek Market) and sometimes load and offload passengers in the Banks DIH parking area,” said Daniels. After being warned by the police, Daniels said that the operators would comply for a short period of time before going back to their usual, and illegal, practice of loading and offloading passengers out of the designated area.
Due to this, the minibus operators, whose vehicles were detained at the Brickdam Police Station, were charged with breaching their Road Service Licences.
The problem of these route 32 minibuses ‘running the hot plate’ apparently stems from an alleged fiasco between a few of the minibus operators and the City Police.
Daniels alleged that Assistant Superintendent of the City Constabulary was involved in a racket where a few minibuses were brought up to the Constabulary (which is at the front of the Route 32 minibus line of buses being loaded) and the drivers of those minibuses taken into the Constabulary building.
As the drivers are in the building, under investigation, the minibus touts load the minibuses.
According to the Deputy Superintendent in charge of Traffic, ‘A’ Division, if and when the traffic police come by and query what the minibuses are doing parked there, without drivers, the City Police apparently tell them that they are investigating the drivers and the traffic police continue their duties.
When the minibuses are loaded, the drivers are released and they get into their loaded minibuses and continue out of the Stabroek Market. “So it creates a problem and a disenfranchisement for other drivers. This is what causes the spinning of the other minibuses,” said Daniels.
Bailey said that he knew nothing of this, and denied all of the allegations brought against him by Daniels. Further, Bailey said that he found the allegations surprising, since both he and Daniels sit on the Street Vending Committee, a committee that deals with street vending and parking in Georgetown, and Daniels had never mentioned anything concerning the matter, “either personally or professionally.”
He added that the two see each other on a regular basis, at the committee meetings.
Concerning the allegations that he may have been involved in the racket, Bailey said, “I could, using the same reasoning as Mr Daniels, suggest that members of the police force are acting in collusion with these delinquent minibus operators, but I would never say such a thing.”
In the face of these problems, Bailey said that he thought that some dialogue between the City Constabulary and the Police Traffic Department was necessary.
On the other side of the coin stand the minibus operators, who yesterday spoke to this newspaper outside of the Brickdam Police Station. They claim that they were not ‘running the hot plate.’
They allege that the reason their minibuses were held was because they refused to pay monies to the Zone 32 Minibus Association.
The minibus operators said that this ‘self-styled’ minibus association is demanding that each minibus pays $140 per trip it makes from the Stabroek Market route 32 minibus park. The drivers who were detained at the Brickdam Police Station have said that their minibuses were targeted because they refused to pay this money.
Speaking to one of the founding members of the association, James Sandial, this newspaper was made to understand that the association was trying to get the minibuses to enter and utilise the minibus park in an orderly fashion.
The association also employs the services of a warden, Mohammed Kassim, who records which minibuses enters the park, in what order. He also attempts to ensure that the minibuses do not cut the line of minibuses waiting to load, at the park.
He also collects $140 from each minibus each time they enter the park. Not all of the minibus operators are paying the money which is being asked of them, because they said that they do not see the association as being legitimate.
These operators said that Kassim was recording the licence plate numbers of minibuses who did not pay the $140. The list of names, which Kassim made, said the operators, was then passed to members of the police force, who then detained the minibuses on that list.
Answering these allegations, the Deputy Superintendent in charge of Traffic, ‘A’ Division, said that he knew nothing of this. He maintained that the minibuses which were detained were held for loading and unloading passengers outside of their park.
“We are not looking after turn systems, or who runs a park,” said Daniels. “A park is provided. So I told the officers, go and bring all of the buses that spin.”
He said that he met with the operators, whose minibuses were impounded, and told them that he knew nothing of anyone taking money to enter the minibus park. “There is a park provided, you must go into the park and stay there and operate from there,” Daniels told the minibus operators.
Further, Daniels said that the police were prosecuting the operators for the complaints that they had received and for what the police had observed them doing. “The spinning is getting out of hand,” said Daniels, as he added that some time soon, the police would take legal action against minibus touts for soliciting passengers.
Nonetheless, many of the route 32 minibus operators said that they thought it to be strange that only route 32 minibuses had been detained when other minibuses also ‘run the hot plate.’

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