Crime Chief: give us something to work with

Aug 26, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The Crime Chief of the Guyana Police Force is running the risk of living up to his official law enforcement title, but in a strange way. As we understand the duties attached to the designation, a Crime Chief should have as his or her highest priority, the solving of crimes. We are sure that our own Crime Chief would wholeheartedly agree that crime solutions must only be as a result of one kind of approach centering such operations.

We table how we see this must occur. It must be that such successes are based on and driven by the cleanest and tightest pursuit of all the baffling, stubborn, clashing elements that are part and parcel of well-planned and well-executed crimes, especially capital crimes. Murder is one such crime, and the higher the profile, the more connective the tissue of such a crime to a possibly sprawling underworld network, the more diligent and dogged the chase must be. The unravelling of facts deliberately obscured the narrowing down by process of elimination for identifying of possible suspects, the intelligence from boots on the ground, ears recruited for such purposes, and the availability of technology’s eyes all feature prominently. Though only a small part of the work and methods of crime fighting and crime solving, we are positive that our own current Crime Chief in the GPF is well aware of what we speak, may even agree with what we share.

What is troubling is how the Crime Chief has made himself look in some of the developments that have transpired with the murder on Main Street. All Guyana should know the one of which we speak. To state it flatly, the Crime Chief has not done himself any justice, is not in the running for any accolades, or has come across looking like or smelling like a rose. This is bad for the Crime Chief, and it is definitely bad for Guyanese in the bigger picture. It involves a tiny tot of something that goes by the name of trust.

Police work involves a lot of trust, the hard-earned results have to possess all the ingredients that inspire trust. It is not a matter of routine trust, but deep, enduring trust. The kind that makes citizens sit up and say that they are in good hands, that given his words and postures and profile, that a Crime Chief is someone for whom they will rise in defense, go to bat for, by standing in his corner. We regret to have to say it, but we are not left with much of a choice: the Crime Chief has let us down. We at this paper can manage because we have grown accustomed, even hardened, by long reporting on the ills and weaknesses of Guyana. What is concerning is where what is taking place in full public view with the murder on Main Street leaves the Guyanese public.

Though common knowledge, we have a duty to share again, if only to emphasise that which we live with, recoil from. It is that confidence in the GPF is at a very low ebb, almost the bottom of the bottom, some would say there has to be reaching upwards to get close to the bottom. For in the Main Street murder alone, there is this spectacle that puts Guyana under scrutiny, and the evidence is that it has lost its bearings, its institutional fortitude, and the core of its leadership soul. We can’t investigate anything with authority when credibility continues to haemorrhage like this. When there are these back-and-forth revelations before the public, when there is this contentiousness about who said or did what, and in what sequence, it follows that we are all the worst from these sorry episodes in the GPF. It is of how things have degraded in this country, and in most places and every layer. Perhaps the expectations of the Guyanese people are high, but when the GPF and its Crime Chief become the object of question and concern, of suspicion and distrust, then we have fallen far and hard. How is the GPF going to investigate anyone? How is the Crime Chief going to be received when he reports on anything?

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