Guyana’s cops must be held to the same standard on obstruction of justice as the rest of the commonwealth

Jul 21, 2026 Letters

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Dear Editor,

A recent Kaieteur News report describes a mechanic who alleges he was unlawfully detained and pressured by cops to falsely implicate a sitting MP in a murder — told to say the MP ordered him to tint a white fielder wagon tied to the case, a claim he denies, but which he relayed to his attorney. Thereafter, another media report surfaced that the DPP’s chambers intends to keep the same murder case “fresh on the desks of state prosecutors.” Nowhere in that story is there any acknowledgment of the alleged police misconduct itself. If true, this is an attempt to pervert justice, and it should concern every citizen who expects cops to uphold the law rather than manufacture evidence to fit a predetermined outcome, and moreso, the attorney who was informed by his client what transpired during his detention by cops whose conduct I beg, editor, to refer as reprehensible conduct, if the facts told by the mechanic prove true and what the attorney had substantiated.

What happens to a Guyanese cop who does this? Too often, nothing. Cops who coach witnesses, plant evidence, or coerce false statements seem to act with impunity that would be unthinkable elsewhere in the commonwealth.

Trinidad and Tobago, sharing our common-law inheritance and policing culture, is instructive-not because it has solved this problem, but because its institutions have shown a willingness to name and act on it. In October 2020, Trinidad’s DPP personally instructed that two cops be criminally charged with perverting the course of justice, after one filed a false report- corroborated by a colleague-claiming lost ammunition during a chase that never happened. That case went before an Arima magistrate: a clear, public signal from the state that fabrication by police is prosecutable misconduct, not an internal matter to be managed quietly. Separately, in a civil claim for malicious prosecution, a trial judge found that a cop had fabricated the allegations underlying a citizen’s arrest — a finding the Privy Council upheld on appeal. In both instances, once wrongdoing was identified, Trinidad’s state apparatus moved to formally charge or judicially condemn the cops involved, rather than absorb the allegation into an open-ended file.

Contrast that with Guyana’s posture in the said murder case: the DPP’s Chambers response to the mechanic’s allegations was to reaffirm that the murder file remains active — silent on the cop or cops, and/or anyone else in the state apparatus accused of coercing false testimony by the mechanic. I raise this not because Guyana lacks comparable episodes of cop misconduct; corruption complaints against our force are, by government’s own admission, frequent. But I couldn’t find a single instance in the past 2 decades of a Guyanese cop criminally charged and convicted for fabricating evidence or coercing testimony, perhaps I’m not alert enough. That silence is itself the indictment. The machinery to hold cops accountable for this specific conduct is rarely, if ever, engaged — even when, as here, the allegation directly touches a case already before the courts. In Canada, where I now practise, this is squarely a s. 139 Criminal Code offence: wilfully obstructing, perverting, or defeating justice, including dissuading a witness through threats or corrupt means, with a maximum 10-year sentence. Guyana’s own Criminal Law (Offences) Act already criminalises obstruction and fabrication of evidence. The legal architecture isn’t the problem — enforcement is. Why have a toothless statute enacted in the first place, and keep recruiting 200 recruits annually who can flout the law at their whims and fancies just because they hold a badge? These are not Clint Eastwoods, but real Guyanese men and women trained by competent, accountable and qualified Instructors at the Police Training Academy. Or perhaps the problem is actually emanating with the level of training and capacity-building of said Academy.

There is no principled reason a cop in Georgetown should face less accountability than one in Port of Spain for identical conduct. I call on the Office of Professional Responsibility, the DPP, and the Police Complaints Authority to investigate both the mechanic’s and his attorney-at-law’s allegations directly and publicly — not merely keep the underlying murder file open — and to ensure that any cop found to have perverted justice is charged and removed from the force, not quietly transferred. The rule of law cannot be selective. If ordinary citizens answer for obstructing justice, so must the men and women sworn to uphold it.

Respectfully,

Shabeer Zafar, barrister-at-law

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• Commonwealth, Guyana's cops, Letters, obstruction of justice

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