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Killing a few does not ease the crime situation

May 19, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor
I pen this letter with deep concern for the level of security of fellow citizens. Please permit a few lines in your paper so that the reading public and the relevant authorities can read and hopefully take the necessary actions to reduce and prevent the surging level of armed robberies we are in the midst of experiencing.
Attention Guyana Police Force, to the Honourable Minister of Home Affairs, the Commissioner-of-Police and the Crime Chief, armed robberies, including home burglaries and muggings, are in peak season once again. It is not simply alright to kill a couple criminal elements and hope the enabling conditions fueling crime will go away.  Preventative policing, meaning reducing the environmental and socioeconomic enablers of crime is of critical importance in Guyana.
Thus, I pen this letter to you all with the aim of alerting you of my observations so this situation so you may take necessary action to prevent this situation from escalating to the point where it becomes more organized than it already is.  Although my aim writing article is not to offer broad or specific correlations neither contributing factors, I have observed two related phenomena which you all may be interested in improving upon since it is your SWORN DUTY and RESPONSIBILITY.
My first observation concerns police response time.  I am at a loss when contemplating how in 2010 the police can take more than 30 minutes to show up at the scene of a crime (I’m making reference here to the recent robbery in Corentyne, Berbice).
Similarly, when my home was broken into (I’ll come back to this later) the police took over one hour to arrive at the scene. As a matter of fact they told us that they will come when there is daylight. Consider this as the nearest police station to my home is a five-minute walk.
Then yesterday there was a robbery on Quamina Street right in front of the Guyana Responsible Parenthood Association.  There is/was a police outpost on the corners of Main and Quamina Streets; however there was no sign of the police, leaving outpost to do the police’s work.
This brings me to my second observation which concerns the reduced police presence after working hours in and around the Georgetown, especially in zones with a history of criminal activities.
Closer to home, my friend and colleague, who is a foreign consultant working in Guyana, had her residence broken into twice within one week.  Wonder what memories of Guyana she will share to her friends and family in her home country?
Even closer to home, my home was broken into three times in the space of one month. Luckily, I suppose, the thief was later apprehended as he attempted to cart off a television set he had earlier stashed in a clump of bushes. There is no street light where my house is located.
I wonder if the police have a policy of recording their response times by areas, time of day/night and types of crimes.  Something as simple as this could improve efficiency by suggesting training and equipment to mitigate highlighted inefficiencies.  Are the police interested in this sort of efficiency monitoring?
The police service can directly influence the presence of environmental conditions by facilitating the removal of bushes and installation of functioning street lights.  Come on people let’s get serious and begin to police intelligently, lives are at stake.  Citizen security is the extent to which individuals and groups feel safe in and outside their communities, not what a minister or president determines as feeling safe.
Concerned citizen

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