Missing firearms and crime

Mar 25, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor,
The many incidents involving gun crimes is staggering with each passing day seeing a new episode. It pains me that much is not done to stop this present menace to society.
Guyana is fast becoming a dangerous place to live. You cannot be at peace in your home on the streets or at your business place, without the fear of some vehicle turning up with a group of men carrying out another gruesome robbery and or murder.
In recent times the fashionable form of crime is that you acquire a firearm get a vehicle and target some home or business that has the booty and worth the heist and simply carry out a successful attack.
In tandem with these armed robberies is the fact that a lot of firearms are “supposedly” turning up missing from legitimate places.
Some of the stories we have grown accustomed to in the media runs like this; the female guard at the Finance Minister’s home who allegedly went into the washroom only to return later to find that her pistol has vapourised into thin air.
In another incident a car load of men acting suspiciously, was pulled over and a search of the vehicle unearthed a .38 pistol. Interestingly enough, those culprits revealed to the police that the pistol was owned by a police officer stationed in Georgetown.
I wonder what the result of that case was.
Another incident involved an army officer caught selling guns and ammunition in front of Demico House in broad daylight.
The last I heard of that case was that the officer was relieved of his position as an army officer; what a punishment for such a crime.
The most recent story has a military face wherein a army captain, who allegedly was illegally issued a fiream, casually went to a basketball game and that pistol was “supposedly” stolen.
I hope this article catches the eyes of the Police Commissioner and the Home Affairs Minister.
There is a sinister correlation between these missing firearms and the gun crimes being conducted almost on a daily basis; these guns did not go missing by accident.
One needs no rocket science brains to figure out that these guns as well as taxis are being hired to commit crimes.
I hate to highlight a problem without putting forth a solution to it. For starters the community needs to play a part in this, please memorise numbers of any suspicious looking vehicle whenever they turn up in your communities and pass it on to the police.
In this way road blocks can be set up and arrests made. Secondly, those vehicles found with illegal firearms should be impounded and promptly confiscated by the state; didn’t the police say they are lacking vehicles for crime fighting, here is a workable solution.
I implore the police to “refine” their methods of interrogation of suspects so that valuable information could be arrived at.
We are some way away at getting to the bottom of this problem and many a suspect hold key information that must be had.
Neil Adams

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