The police deserve kudos

Mar 09, 2014 Features / Columnists, My Column

---

The police have been the most pilloried of public servants. They have been abused for being judge, jury and executioner, for being bullies and for being among the most corrupt people in the public service. Indeed, there is hardly a motorist in Guyana who has not been confronted by the police, sometimes threatened with detention unless they hand over some money.
Some of the policemen have been caught and placed before the courts; others have been caught aiding criminals. There was the case of the soldiers who killed a young goldsmith in the Essequibo River. The police found money on them, but that was not the end of the story. Some policemen were nabbed with the money and prosecuted.
There were policemen who were accused of loaning weapons to criminals and more recently, an entire police station had to be transferred because the community believed that the ranks were the criminals. But none can deny that the number of good policemen far outnumber the criminal few, although the criminal few make the headlines.
I have always said that the police are the people who make me sleep comfortably at nights. They are the people who might be slow to respond, but when they do, they provide people with the comfort they need. I couldn’t help but notice recent actions by the police.
One of my colleagues was gung ho about the fingerprinting equipment that the police received. So excited was he that he was the first to report the arrests that followed the acquisition of this piece of equipment. Indeed, since then there have been others. Cold crimes were being solved and this bears testimony to the police crime laboratory and to the ability of the police to preserve evidence.
But there was even something more spectacular about the police. In quite a few cases they just happened to be not far from the scene of a crime. In the city, when two men attempted to rob a female gold miner they were there.
They were also there to chase after at least three groups of criminals who had perpetrated crimes—violent crimes.  On Saturday I learnt that two men entered a home and killed a woman by shooting her in the head and wounding her sister.
No sooner had this crime been committed than the police were hot on the heels of the killers. Needless to say, they caught them. Two more criminals were taken off the streets.
The cases of prompt police action are too numerous to mention and they highlight a course of action that the police have been pursuing for some time. A lot of money has been put into transport facilities and these seem to be providing the police with the kind of mobility they need.
In the developed world the police can respond promptly and this has caught others too. Late last week the local police swooped down on some men who happened to be preparing to attack a facility. A search revealed that the men had guns. Thanks to the police a robbery was averted. It is this mobility that often makes the police in the developed countries appear to be so efficient.
But the police still have a long way to go to win the confidence of the people. That confidence was eroded when the police were aggressive, especially during the crime wave that erupted in 2002 after five criminals broke out of the Camp Street jail on Mash Day that year.
Such was the police action that people who wanted to support them simply backed away. The Guyana Human Rights Association, for example, delivered some scathing releases against the police. And the erosion of confidence simply grew.
Now that the force is seeking to be more humane, the wider society is needed. Recently, there were reports that people would call the police who would take an eternity to respond. This needs to change, but for this to happen there must be technological development. The 911 system is almost useless. People would call and get no answer. This could be frustrating.
Yet for all this, Guyana should never have reached this stage. People are not born criminals. The society provides the fodder. Parenting is a dying art so many young people are left to fend for themselves. The collapse of the parental system is compounded by the failure of the education system.
In school, teachers ignore the slow child much to the chagrin of today’s society.  These slow children grow up to be adults with little skills to cope meaningfully in the society with the result that they are the young criminals. And these young criminals are of both sexes. We have women luring victims for men to pounce on them. There have been numerous reports of men being approached by young women either for a ride or something. As soon as they start to respond the men pounce.
At this time it would seem as though the country is on a merry-go-round. Young victims of a failed education system enter the streets
Ironically, some of them become policemen.

---

---