The police and perceived violence

Jan 16, 2014 Editorial

The movies always make things clear and pure. Detectives find the bad guys by merely walking the streets and collecting information. Sometimes they are so observant and quick of mind that they seem to be way ahead of the ordinary man.
People who are arrested for crimes, break down under intense interrogation sometimes having been exposed to the good cop/bad cop routine. When the person fails to crack, the police let him go, but conducts surveillance until a break comes in the case. However this is only in the movies.
In real life the policemen are not so patient; they resort to violence against the suspect many of whom have died. Some of the suspects have been so badly mutilated that the authorities have had to prosecute the arresting ranks.
There was the case of some over exuberant policemen in New York who sodomised a Haitian immigrant with a broom handle. Of course when they took the victim to a hospital they claimed that the injury was inherited by means other than the true means.
As fate would have it, a nurse at the hospital was also a Haitian immigrant in the United States and while the police who escorted the man to hospital couldn’t fathom what he was saying, the nurse could and she duly made a report. A trial ensued and the policemen were jailed.
Fast forward to Guyana and we encounter a similar case. A young man is sodomised by the police, this time with a baton. The story is not reported until Kaieteur News happened upon it. By this time the victim’s mother had already taken her complaint to the Divisional Commander and to the head of the Brickdam Police Complaints Desk.
Something like that would certainly be reported to the Police Commissioner. The policemen would have been removed from active duty and by now charges would have been laid. Instead, the Guyana Police Force does nothing more than report that it has transferred the policeman. The Police Complaints people at Brickdam appear to have done nothing other than try to suppress the incident.
This is not surprising when we notice the police reaction to other incidents involving policemen. Not so long ago, the relatives of a victim protested what appeared to be preferential treatment of a policeman charged with killing a civilian. Before that incident, the police would place their own in hospital to avoid having him incarcerated. This incident was no different.
The victim was sodomised late last year; the newspapers get wind of the story a month ago and published it. However, it is not until the lawyer announced that he is suing the police force and this gains widespread publicity that the public becomes aware. And it is only then that the police take some action. We now hear that the abuser is under close arrest.
There will now be protests, one of them in London outside the Guyana High Commissioner.
In a democracy the police ensure that everyone gets justice; in Guyana it would seem that only the police are on the side of the law, everyone else is a criminal. It matters not that some of the most heinous crimes are committed by policemen.
Serious questions arise. Should the victim, Colwyn Harding die, would the policeman, a corporal, be charged with murder? The shooting death of a young basketball player, Yohance Douglas, saw how the police reacted when it dawned that two of their own would be charged. They protected the criminals. Despite criminal convictions, both ranks were back on the force. A check revealed that they were never interdicted.
This is the same police force that wants the wider public to trust the police, to form alliances in the fight against crime. The public is not going to take kindly to the manner in which the police behave. Surely the brutality would not go down well. And to make matters worse, the very police charge the victim, place him before the courts and a magistrate sends the victim to prison with his injuries that now threaten his very life.

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