The Christopher Jones Affair: Should the Crime Chief resign?

Mar 20, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Georgetown has a small population. It is roughly about 215,000. If you take into consideration the number of drivers in Georgetown in that figure then the numbers of motorists using Georgetown is tiny, comparatively speaking.
It is total nonsense, then, for the police force to say that it does not know the vehicles that have tinte3de windows and are still being driven with tint that exceed the legal limit. In a small city like this everyone knows everyone. And you can use your own cognitive capacity to ascertain who never gets caught in the police anti-tint dragnet.
Do you know there is a nationally known person of European descent (Guyanese) who does not wear a helmet when riding his motor-cycle as a matter of policy? And how do I know that? Because I am in Georgetown three, four times a day, and have been doing so for decades and decades. I saw him more times that I can count. This includes as recent as last week. It is an unmitigated lie for the senior ranks in the police force to deny that they are not familiar with this scenario.
How in a city with a population of drivers who number less than 150, 000 (which is the national figure), there are still vehicles with very dark tint. This becomes stranger when you take into consideration that each day in Georgetown, traffic patrols are ubiquitous? How are they missing these tinted windows? I am not referring to diplomatic cars and governmental big-wigs.
A TSU patrol pulled over APNU parliamentarian, Christopher Jones for dark windows that exceeded the legal limit. It would be madness for any citizen to assume that because he is an MP he should be immune from police inquiry. It turned out that the police wanted the tint removed and booked him at Eve Leary.
The case becomes curious when you understand that MPs are generally allowed to have dark tint by the Ministry of Home Affairs. It is unlikely for the Ministry to issue a blunt refusal. Many opposition politicians drive cars with black windows. Speaking for myself, I am afraid when such vehicles get close to me. You know how paranoid I am about my security. You just cannot see who in the vehicle is watching you.
According to Jones, he told the TSU ranks that he had an expired permit and was in the process of renewing it. But he had to proceed to Eve Leary where he was placed on bail. Something does not seem right here. If Jones had run a red light, driven dangerously and struck a pedestrian, drove under influence of intoxicants or had no lights on in the night while at the wheel then police inflexibility would be understood.
But the insistence of carrying Jones through the mill over the tint lapse just seems out of the ordinary. In the end, the police acted within the law. But how even handed are they in this country?
The Christopher Jones incident has brought the saga of Ashni Singh full into the faces of all Guyanese. But we need to remind the nation that Ashni Singh road accident file is not the only one that we have seen police inaction in full flow.
My nephew alleged that the President’s son, Alexei Ramotar, ran into him with his RAV 4 and thus was in the wrong. That is my nephew’s word of course. But police investigation just dropped off the radar. And the identical accusation was made by another citizen against then Minister Kellawan Lall. Again no action followed. In both cases (Lall and Ramotar, the victims’ lower limbs were badly broken).
If the police could haul an opposition MP to Eve Leary, book him on bail for heavily tinted windows why is Ashni Singh not in front of a magistrate? To make things worse, the Crime Chief has told Guyana and by extension the world that the police force observes a special protocol for high-ranking governmental officials in cases like the Ashni Singh incident.
As a citizen who lived all his life in Guyana, I am saying such a protocol does not exist and if it does, the opposition should not accept this and should not have any kind of relationship with the Government of Guyana if it is not dissolved.
In the crudest of ways, what the Crime Chief has said is that certain persons are above the law. The opposition, particularly Christopher Jones should demand his resignation.

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The Christopher Jones Affair: Should the Crime Chief resign?

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