Police must stop this practice

Mar 12, 2015 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
Have you ever been stopped by a traffic cop for a traffic light violation or any other minor offence and told that you have to go to the station, with the officer shadowing you like a common criminal? Well it’s becoming more and more the order of the day.
I would like to know if the law compels a person to immediately go to the station if one commits a minor offence like making a wrong turn or failing to stop at a stop sign. Aren’t tickets supposed to be issued for such offences?
In most cases, if you agree to pay $3000 that is the end of the matter, or you can proceed to the station where an officer can write up the matter, or you can pay $5000 and that is the end of that.
This practice is very prevalent.
There are two motorcycle cops attached to a city station who everyday carry no less than twenty people for minor infractions to that station and sometimes these individuals are kept waiting in excess of an hour, which forces people to pay the “early court” fine as one officer describes it.
Nowhere in the Caribbean or the USA are road users ordered to go to Police Stations for minor offences. Why is this practice so unique to Guyana?
Sometime ago two previous Commissioners of Police declared that traffic ranks should desist from this policy but it seems that ranks now feel free to pursue this vile policy.
Now imagine you have a medical emergency or some other urgent issue, why must you have to go the Station and waste time and money?
This practice must stop.
Michael Anthony

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