Don't look! That video is violently sickening!

Don’t look! That video is violently sickening!

Jan 16, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There is a video clip making the rounds of a city police rank violently kicking a mentally challenged man in his face in the area of his eyes. The man was subsequently shot dead. Don’t look at that video if your profession is not journalism or if you are not a police official. People in those lines of work see such violent images quite often.
If you are the faint-hearted kind do not look at it. I did, and because of my areas of training, it didn’t upset me; it made me angry, and that is putting it mildly. Vigilantes beat people badly who are caught in the act of mauling victims of robberies or when they catch them after they have chopped or shot their victims.
Such violent eruptions by vigilantes and passersby are a common trait in Homo sapiens. A German group, a Jamaican group, a congregation of English farmers, etc. witnessing a terrible robbery would beat the perpetrator if they catch him.
What took place with that mentally-challenged man bears no resemblance to such a circumstance. He was crouched in a corner and that rank kept kicking him forcefully in the face. It is inexplicable how one of his eyes did not pop out. The victim was in the news recently because he escaped from the custody of the city constabulary. Now he is dead. Shot by a city rank.
What could that man have done to deserve such bestial treatment at the hands of the city constables? But that is not the pertinent question. The relevant one we should all ask is this; now that we have seen this incident, isn’t it time to put the city constabulary under the jurisdiction of the police force?
I have been a columnist for thirty years and I have pontificated on the crass, cruel, crude, unacceptable conduct of the city constabulary throughout my journalistic career. When I saw the video, I called my editor, Adam Harris to inform him about the kicking. Adam said to me; “what do you expect, some of them are illiterate.” It couldn’t be put any better. But there is more to the perception the public have of these people.
It is not the illiteracy that is the problem. I have friends and associates that are illiterate and they are not inhuman, unkind people. Lack of education does not make the human into a beast. On the contrary, many educated people perpetrated the worst forms of ethnic violence on civilization. The trouble with the city constabulary is that it is an institution with police power that lies outside of the disciplinary jurisdiction of the Guyana Police Force.
Police ranks are trained people who hear the Riot Act read to them constantly during their career. There is no system of discipline in the city police. Their boss is their head. Their ultimate boss is the Town Clerk. Then last year, one of the stupidest things the police force ever did in its existence was to place traffic authority in the hands of the city ranks. The complaints keep mounting. The complaints are about the abuse of power.
A traffic cop is a policeman. He came through the training system of the police force. He has several persons who can discipline him. This is not the same picture with traffic ranks from the city constabulary. Which idiot in government or the police force implemented that idea of vesting city police with authority to regulate traffic in the downtown area?
I have seen ignorant public officials in Guyana all my life, but the city constables are the worst of the lot. The leaders we have, that sermonize the Guyanese people about good things they are doing (Nagamootoo’s Sunday Chronicle columns are full of such banalities), do not mix with the people in the streets to know how they feel about oppression and repression in Guyana. There are very few, if any, market vendor – from Stabroek or Bourda – that would say a good word about the city constabulary.
Let me put it as unambiguous and pellucid as it could ever be put – I visit the parameters of Bourda Market about four times a week – never a day passes in the week, I am not at the Bourda Green. Vendors have mountains of complaints about mistreatment and harassment by the city constables. Last year, I saw a few ranks come out of the Bourda office and beat a vendor. I have seen many such instances in my journalistic career. The City Constabulary needs to be brought under the police force to stop its uncivilized conduct. I doubt that will ever happen.

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