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Serve and protect
Editorial…
Kaieteur News- Very few Guyanese, if asked to give an objective assessment of the Guyana Police Force, would have many good things to say.
Some of the servicemen and women would also find it hard to find positive things about their organisation. Poor pay, substandard workplaces (police stations), armed gangs, drug smuggling, and the ever-present threat of being posted into the interior are only a smattering of the challenges faced by the average police rank. Citizens would tell you of unprofessional conduct of many of the ranks; their deception and corrupt ways. So the question has to be asked: “Why is it that policemen do not receive more respect from those same average citizens?”
While some may contend that Guyanese are generally very responsive to the police in their interactions, this response is more often a result of fear than respect. There is a wide chasm between the two reactions, and in fact the reasons for the elicited fear go to the heart of why policemen are not more widely respected. There is, after all, the old adage that respect can only be earned and not demanded. The fear that the police engender in the heart of the average citizen is not of recent vintage – and in fact is coeval with the very origin of the organisation. Formed right after the abolition of slavery, naming it a “force” summarised its modus operandi in the execution of its duties.
Those duties, plain and simple, were to ensure by any means necessary that the ex-slaves would never be in a position to exact vengeance for their centuries of degradation.
This colonial model of policing was not dependent on any mutually binding social contract. The Guyana Police Force was one of the most heavily armed from its inception, and it remains so to this day.
It would appear that, even though the rest of the world has moved on in their conception of the relationship between the police and the citizenry, Guyana is still stuck in the old mode. Nothing much has changed in the post-independence era. It has been asserted that a confrontational posture is inculcated into policemen right from their induction into the police training schools. Even if not true, it certainly describes the attitude of most policemen when dealing with the public.
It appears that they are never told that it is the public that pays their salaries (meagre as they may be), and it is the public that they are supposed to “Serve and Protect”.
There are several other reasons for the public’s skittishness where the police are concerned. There are the encounters with suspects who are supposedly armed (often only with cutlasses), but who incredibly decide to turn around and attack the more heavily armed policemen and are then killed. Very few are ever taken alive.
Then there are the persistent allegations of rough interrogations, torture, and even death while in custody. One hears of inquiries, but somehow the practice keeps on cropping up.
While the notorious black clothes squad has long been disbanded after persistent public outcry, its rough and ready methods are apparently being faithfully upheld by some elements of the Force. Another source of the public’s discontent with the police is the alleged differential treatment accorded by them to the “big ones” of society.
But the practice that turns off citizens the most (and most citizens) is the petty shakedown by traffic police that has become almost standard across the land. Every effort of the administration to tighten up on road safety is taken as licence to extract more “raises”.
The incentive for the beleaguered “John Public” to pay up is the not so subtle hint that they could be hauled back to the police station for the merest infraction (or even none). Since 2004, there have been a slew of reports and recommendations dealing with police reform. We urge the authorities to implement fully these recommendations. In the meantime, maybe they can also have the name of the institution changed to “Police Service”, as was approved unanimously some time ago. One hopes that the change of name might suggest the need for a change of attitude in the police.
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