SWAT under the PPP would be a disaster

Oct 11, 2013 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I have been pondering the revelation that a SWAT Team will be developed to combat crime, and frankly, the thought of that is more fearful for me than the spectre of the criminality that inundates Guyana today. The Special Weapons and Tactics teams assembled in nations across the globe are not used in situations where there is merely a high crime rate.
They are used in extraordinary situations that cannot be dealt with by standard Law Enforcement detachments and operations, and so it becomes necessary to resort to a specialized unit that employs specialized tactics and increased firepower. For example, armed hold outs and hostage situations. That is not the pattern of criminality that we are experiencing in Guyana. My fears are compounded by the fact that this team is being assembled under a regime with a very poor record and recognition of due process and the presumption of innocence, of the principle of equality under the Law, of the principle that as a Government it is legally obligated to ensure that all citizens are accorded equal rights and protection under the law, regardless of their race, ethnicity or political affiliation.
This team is being assembled under a regime that has dismissed the spectre of armed vigilante gangs kidnapping, torturing and murdering citizens under the pretext that they were criminal suspects as no big thing. And even if these were indeed men who were engaged in crime, the death penalty is applicable for only murder and treason, and their killing amount to nothing less than mass murder.
Mr. Editor, we have just had a situation in which a young man (Chaka Chase) was arrested for the murder of a Police Officer, when the description of the assailant provided by witnesses drastically differed from the physical appearance of this young man, when the Police were refusing to take statements from those who verified where he was at the time the crime was being committed, and where he was allegedly tortured into confessing to that crime, so that the public would accept it as being solved, and the true murderer could be free to continue to enjoy immunity for the crimes he committed.
Think about that SWAT Team operating under the same political and Law Enforcement Management and influence that oversaw what I have just referenced, and the danger it holds for young men like the one caught in the frame-up. My personal views on this are that it harbors frightening and dangerous implications and risks for communities on which the regime has virtually declared open season. I see certain environs and communities in Guyana becoming little Sowetos, as the PPP regime use this Swat Team to provide a vicarious sense of security to those members of its constituency who might justifiably live in fear of becoming victims of crime, while those who have carte blanche to engage in criminality without fear of intervention continue to enjoy that privilege.
No sitting regime, that by expression and implication in its reaction to the vigilante murders of hundreds, delivers a message that certain segments of the national population have no rights that they are duty bound to respect, should be entrusted with the management of a specialized force like a SWAT Team. No Government in which members of its political and Governmental assembly were found to be connected with vigilante gangs, and who were never prosecuted for such involvement, should be entrusted with the authority to manage a force authorized to utilize extreme procedures, powers and armaments in a Law Enforcement Environment.
No regime that never once publicly came out and condemned vigilante killings while they were in progress, never exhorted Law enforcement to go after the members of such gangs, but by its very attitude loudly proclaims the unlawful killing of hundreds as no big deal, should be entrusted with the awful tool of a SWAT Team, when it has a history of utilizing agencies and apparatus of the state for its own political purposes and agendas.
If in a small nation like Guyana with limited roadway access to and fro, criminals are able to freely commit the most atrocious crimes in broad daylight and get away, the solution is not a specialized force to alleviate the problem. The solution is a thorough investigation into the operations of Law Enforcement, the external and political interferences that affect the functioning of the institution. The solution is equipping the force with the technology that drastically shortens its response time to reports, that allows deployment of mobile detachments to crime scenes as needed, and the removal of the sacred cow of protection of masterminds behind the burgeoning street crimes and white collar crimes that have become pervasive since this regime has been in power.
In 1991 Guyana had one of the lowest murder rates among nations in the world. The question is, what has happened since then? If a regime finds nothing morally and ethnically forbidding about criminal gangs usurping the authority of the Law Enforcement and the Courts, then that regime is ill equipped to deal with any criminal situation in a manner where due process and the rule of law remain sacrosanct. Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being by a human being with malice afore thought expressed or implied. You have lost all moral and ethical groundings when you selectively cherry pick which murders are revolting, and this picking is influenced by who is the victim and who is the murderer.
Mark A. Benschop

 

 

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