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Blatant violation of a citizen’s rights

Mar 11, 2014 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
While on my way home at about 8:30 pm on Monday 3rd March 2014, I observed something which upset me.  I was at the western end of the Demerara Harbour Bridge.  The Police were conducting an anti-crime patrol.  In a dark corner away to my left, in the old road which flows into the bridge approach something caught my attention.
There was a police rank attired in dark clothing and visibly armed.  He was engaged in an unfriendly conversation with the male driver of a motor car.  Under the watchful eye of the armed rank, the driver was removing the tint from his car, protesting as he ripped off the tint.
This was a case of an armed police officer in uniform performing the roles of police, prosecutor and magistrate.  The complete package at your service in the dark!  Did he also function as the court of clerk and cashier?  I would never know.  Assumption of the multiple roles however, suggests a certain trend.
I was somehow led to believe that, a police officer who finds that a citizen has committed an offence would first caution that citizen about the commission of that offence.  Arrest and charge will then follow.  Station bail, if applicable, will come after arrest and charge.  The citizen is then prosecuted in a court of law.  The findings of the court will result in a determination of the matter by the magistrate.  Penalties, where necessary, will be then applied by the learned magistrate. In short, I was led to believe that due process and natural justice were alive and well in Guyana.
Why did I believe these things?  I am living in a country which I believed to be a democracy.  I now harbour serious doubts.  Not just because of the policeman who was judge, jury and executioner, but because there was a senior officer present at the western end of the Demerara Harbour Bridge at that time.  He was in full uniform.  He, therefore, condoned the unlawful behaviour of this junior rank who was obviously under his command at the time.
This is a case of a citizen’s rights being violated by an armed, uniformed police officer while under the supervision of a senior police officer in uniform in the full view of the public.  The rot continues.
Mervyn Williams

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