Reforming the deformed

Sep 30, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

A few months ago, there was a photograph of a police officer pumping petrol from a police storage tank into his personal car. The picture made the rounds on social media and every one waited with bated breath to find out when charges would be laid against the rank.
The assumption at the time, whether rightly or wrongly, was that this was an unlawful act and that the police would take action. As it turned out, the public has heard nothing about any charges being laid in this matter.
It can be that there is no basis for a charge. It can be that the rank was authorized to use his personal vehicle to do police work and there could have been an arrangement in which the police force put fuel in his vehicle for this purpose.
The fact of the matter is that a certain perception had been created in the minds of the public. The police were duty bound to address this perception and to provide an explanation for the rank’s actions. They have not done so as yet.
The failure of the police to offer an explanation will lead the public to come to its own conclusion and that may not be favorable to the police force.
The Guyana Police Force has good men and women. But they are part of an institution that has become rotten to the core and it will take more than a few good men and women to reform that institution.
The Guyana Police Force cannot be reformed. The police force has to be dismantled and rebuilt. The rot is too deep and there is an internal culture of corruption which has been nurtured for decades now. The system does not work.
The coalition government is making the same mistake as the PPPC. It is trying to reform the Guyana Police Force. There comes a time, however, when certain institutions simply cannot be reformed. They become so deformed that the only option is to dismantle those institutions and put a completely new structure in place.
The PPPC simply was afraid to do so because of the ethnic composition of the force. They feared a political backlash. As such, they tried to live with the Guyana Police Force. They were unsuccessful. The failure to rein in crime is one of the reasons why they lost power.
The new government does not have the same problem as the PPPC. It does not have to worry about any political backlash from the police. The Guyana Police Force is stacked with supporters of the ruling coalition.
The new government knows that the Guyana Police Force is rotten. It believes that it can turn the force around. It is wrong just as how the PPPC was wrong about turning around the Guyana Sugar Corporation.
When an apple goes bad, it can become so bad that it poisons the entire fruit. The Guyana Police Force is like that apple. It has some good spots but it has become so rotten that it makes no sense trying to salvage the good parts.
The Guyana Police Force has to be dismantled and a new police force with about 90% new personnel recruited. This is the only way to remove the rot and at the same time have an efficient security apparatus.
Dismantling the main security apparatus of the state has never been done in any part of the world. Even in Iraq, after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the coalition forces that ‘liberated’ Iraq were forced to employ former agents of Saddam Hussein in the police force. It did lead to problems because some of these forces carried out attacks against their new establishment. Trying to dismantle the Force in Guyana has no precedent on which the government can fall back on. And so the new government probably believes that this is a mission impossible.
It is wrong. What will become impossible is what the government is trying to do. It is trying to reform the deformed Guyana Police Force. Wish them luck!

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