Latest update November 15th, 2024 1:00 AM
AFC urges street protests against rising crime
The Guyana Police Force has been called upon to step up its law enforcement efforts to bring down escalating crime
– calls on Govt. to spend more to tackle gun violence
Kaieteur News – Amid an escalation in criminal activities here with almost daily murders and robberies, the Alliance For Change (AFC) has called on citizens to take to the streets demanding betterment from leaders. The party said too that the country needs a moral reckoning and that citizens do not deserve to die suddenly and violently by bullets.
The AFC’s statement was made against the background of the killing of Jairam Ramkishun, 69 of Westminster Housing Scheme West Bank Demerara who was shot and killed on Sunday when bandits invaded his home. “Only recently, Evelyn Alves was shot dead in the head, execution style, at Diamond East Bank Demerara. The AFC offers its condolences to the bereaved families of these murder victims but asserts that we all must be outraged when such shootings and killings occur, especially with the regularity within recent times.” “We seem to have become numbed to it all. We, however, should take to the press, social media, and streets demanding that Government and our law enforcement actors diagnose carefully why this increase in shootings and killings for its reduction if not its elimination.”
The AFC said it is aware that much work was done under the Citizen Security and Strengthening Programme and the British Security Sector Reform Programme. ”Implementation of the recommendations undoubtedly has ceased or have been shelved. To be sustainably successful in reducing gun violence, the enforcement actors, primarily the Guyana Police Force (GPF), must craft appropriate evidence-based and community-informed solutions. The Government and the enforcement actors involved must have a handle on who is committing the violence, where they are committing it, and why,” the party said in its statement.
According to the AFC the well-known tools to identify that small cohort of especially young men most likely to shoot or be shot must be employed. “Crime mapping to identify where the hotspots are concentrated must be scrupulously done and shared with the public, along with the disaggregated weekly statistics of serious crimes. Government and the Police must combine data and human intelligence to understand the dynamics of this high-end lethal violence with an emphasis to discover the proximate and root causes.”
The AFC said it believes that budgetary allocations for a better security for all Guyana must be structured to target especially this increase in gun crimes. “Devoting additional resources to curb gun violence and murders is affordable by any budgetary standard, especially if compared to the costs of the loss of lives and limbs, the medical costs, the criminal justice costs, lost earnings, the reduced quality of life and so many consequential costs of the violence. But there must be funds allocated specifically for this purpose: reduction of shooting and killing.”
The AFC said police force and the Ministry of Home Affairs must thereafter provide progress reports showing that the monies are being spent on the people, places and behaviours that have been identified as driving this gun violence. Sadly, our GPF these days, especially some members of the Officer Corps, seem to be far removed from these core functions and progressive activities. As a nation we will be worse off for it,” the AFC statement concluded.
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