Enhancing CPG relations with the community (Part 2)

Jun 03, 2012 News

---

 

 

A few weeks ago, the Community Policing Organization of Guyana celebrated the 36th year of its existence. To mark the occasion, a number of events were held. These included public discourses and seminars, highlighting the work of CPGs and demonstrating its significance and benefits to the society.
At one such seminar, Taajnauth Jadunauth, one of Guyana’s leading CPG advocates delivered a presentation entitled “enhancing CPG relations with the community”.
Jadunauth is an executive member of the Enmore Community Policing group and chairman of the Enmore Station Management Committee.
Recently the village of Enmore has come under scrutiny with two highly publicized murders and several break- ins committed on business places.
The village’s community policing group is considered one of the most vibrant in the country and the recent events have been a cause for concern in a community that was once considered impregnable.
Jadunath’s presentation at the CPG anniversary forum is timely and it was felt that it is worth publishing for the general public to digest, especially with the criticism surrounding community policing.
Below is the conclusion of Jadunauth’s presentation.

********

(Continued from last week)
It bears repetition that Community Policing is voluntary work. The active membership is already stretched to the limit just to patrol, and even that is very stressful. On top of that, members have to come out of their pockets to put gas into the vehicles and to repair the vehicles, etc. But it does not have to be like that.
If my experience in the Concerned Citizens of Enmore Policing Group is anything to go by, please permit me to tell you what we did to engage our community.
1) The leadership of our Group is made up of persons with integrity and includes influential businessmen, factory workers and even cane-cutters. This sends a message of inclusivity. We do not have an elite group of people lording it over the community. We talk to persons one-on-one and we encourage them into the leadership structure. This gives us credibility.
2) We raise funds by co-opting influential persons in the community in our fund-raising drives: to sell tickets; to donate prizes; to donate furniture; etc. I would guess that 85% of Enmore supports our fund-raising efforts.
3) We divide the community into wards and put sub-executives to head each ward. We hold meetings in each ward, thus we are able to bring out the women folk to meetings. We let them know of their vulnerability and the need for their involvement. This improves communication and feedback. In effect, we take the Group to the people.
4) Operationally, we confine patrols to within wards so that members do not have to go outside of their wards or any distance away from their homes. We have a roving patrol which traverses the wider community.
5) We use interlinked hand-held sets patched into a base radio which is operational between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Thus, an alarm raised over the radio by one ward is heard by all other wards at the same time, thereby making response faster and more strategic.
6) After a fund-raiser, we prepare 100 statements and distribute them. It becomes a public document.
7) We address certain community issues. If we cannot resolve them, we involve appropriate agencies.
8) We opened a library so that we can bring young people to our Community Policing Group base.
9) We have games which kids can play and a gym which young people can use.
10) We sent some of our members into the Army Reserve for training.
And there are a few other initiatives in place.
With the exception of an initial $200,000: given by then Minister Gajraj to assist in building our base, we constructed a building and put facilities in place with funds generated from and by the community and from well-wishers outside of the community.
So, we had gone beyond the ordinary to involve the community and they had responded positively. While not all Groups may be able to go it like we did, it is worth the try if we want to improve relations between CPGs and communities.
Do we get cussed out? Sure! But we can go to the same persons who cuss us out and get them to buy our Bar-B-Que tickets. It is a love/hate situation, and we understand and live with that reality.
What is the new reality?
I have just recounted the success story. But we also have our share of problems, most of recent origin.
Our Group can still raise $300,000: in two weeks from our community. But we have lost membership to migration, new housing schemes, deaths, attrition, and we have not been able to replace them fast enough. The average age of a CPG member is about 50. If the age range of current active CPG membership is anything to go by, the major challenge is to get our youths to be involved in Community Policing and to be ready for leadership succession.
In all of this, however, there needs to be a recognition that the socio-political dynamics which gave birth to vigilante groups, now CPGs, have altered considerably. We have moved from community-oriented threats to attacks against singled-out persons/residences/businesses.
The raison d’être for the community to have banded together, i.e., the earlier threats and vulnerabilities of the community as a whole, have diminished. Simultaneously, being our brother’s keeper is giving way to the tragic emphasis on individualism, the me, myself and I syndrome. Individualism is rapidly replacing community-mindedness. For example, robberies are occurring almost daily in communities and are witnessed by residents, but hardly anyone will lift a finger to offer help. Nobody is even prepared to give a statement to the Police of what he/she had seen.
The bottom line of this individualistic existence is that residents are standing in line to get attacked, to be robbed–one at a time. While the criminal community is getting stronger and more aggressive, the regular community is getting more and more fragmented and individualistic.
The community library has been replaced by personal computers. Table tennis, cricket, squash, dominoes, gym, etc., have given way to computer games and the electronic age. Interpersonal relationships, born of playing together, working together and achieving together, which developed and nurtured community relationship, cohesiveness and responsiveness, is under serious threat. The Internet and Facebook are the new communal meeting places.
We are losing our “road sense”. Have you ever seen someone on the cell phone texting away? Or someone on the cell phone crossing the road in the middle of heavy traffic? He is totally oblivious to anything around him, let alone being security conscious.
In effect, our communities are losing an entire generation. And I daresay that, left unaddressed, community organizations, including CPGs, will be a thing of the past in another decade, if not sooner. Nobody is going to be in an organization. And it is outside of the scope and capability of CPGs to remedy this. Therefore, to ask or to expect existing Community Policing Groups to go beyond patrols in the community setting into the realm of developmental programmes might be overshooting it.
CONCLUSION
Crime will continue to grow in Guyana, simply because there are those who display growing affluence, but moreso because there are those who display a growing reluctance to want to work to earn an honest living. As age catches up with existing members of CPGs, as bringing young people on board becomes more and more remote, as the Police Force experiences ongoing difficulty to recruit suitable persons into the Force, as voluntarism in community (as in CPGs) fades, the increasing threat to community  security, as indeed national security, seems very probable. Greater reliance is being placed on electronic surveillance, cameras at homes and at business places and on paid security, and less reliance on traditional security mechanisms.
I see also that breaches of the law will be committed more by the young within the community, simply because they lack appreciation or respect for law and order, and the local response will be inadequate, for the following reasons:
a) Because of the age gap and the inherent, differing philosophies;
b) Because CPG personnel are not being regarded as “Law Officers”;
c) Because young offenders have young law enforcement friends in the Force and because they can buy their way out of prosecution; and
d) Because it is difficult, if not impossible, to get young people into the fold of law enforcement/crime fighting at the local level.
For Community Policing to continue to be on the local landscape, therefore, it would take more than the community to support its existence and effectiveness. In other words, I see a greater reliance by CPGs on higher and wider levels of relationships over and above the immediate relationship with their communities, if they are to have any relevance.
It would require identified groups working together and centrally influenced to ensure some semblance of continuity in the institution we know as Community Policing.
1) The subject Ministry (of Home Affairs)
2) The Guyana Police Force
3) Community leadership – Churches, NGOs
4) Elected Civic Officials – NDCs
5) The Business Community
6) Ministry of Education-through the school system
7) Other interest Groups
8) The Media
For now, those who serve within the Community Policing fraternity should be encouraged, supported and guided in our efforts to perpetuate the Community Policing movement, and all stakeholders, particularly at the central levels of the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Guyana Police Force, should be aggressive in aiding the environment to identify and develop leadership at the community level, current challenges notwithstanding.
Simultaneously, I wish to petition the leadership of Community Policing Groups to embrace the task to bridge any existing gap between Groups and their communities, for not doing so will discount the very rationale for the existence of Community Policing.
Too much has already been put into the cause to let it go to waste. Therefore, let us persevere!

---

---