The police and the submersible

Who would have thought Guyana had developed so far so fast? It is true we built ships in the old days to ply our rivers – but transoceanic submarines – or in this case, a submersible, constructed, it must be said, in fairly primitive conditions in the Waini forest? This was the last thing even the ever optimistic Minister of Finance could have anticipated in one of his more uninhibited flights of imagination.

Barring matters relating to log exports, however, it was only the first of two quite astonishing news items which came to public attention over the last two days; the other was the announcement from the inner sanctum of the Ministry of Home Affairs that the Guyana Police Force was to increase its established strength of 3410 by 1546, to a grand total of 4956. The press release which was the vehicle for communicating this strange intimation also informed the public that the Force’s establishment of 3410 officers had been in existence since 1977.

The first thing which might be noted is that a whole parade of Police Commissioners, going back many years, has given as one of the reasons for the underperformance of the Force the fact that it was under strength – under strength in the sense that it couldn’t even attract enough recruits to fill vacancies on the establishment, not that it already had its full complement but still needed more manpower to function effectively. As a consequence, there had been various recruitment drives which to the best of anyone’s knowledge met with only limited success. If in more recent times the Force was brought up to full establishment strength, no one, more especially the Ministry of Home Affairs, bothered to tell the citizenry.

Is Mr Clement Rohee going to tell us, that fairly literate, upright would-be recruits are going to be storming Eve Leary or wherever to sit the entrance exam (if they still have one) in order to be accepted into the police for training? If so, he is the only one in the country who believes it. Just how would it be achieved, he should ask himself, especially as there is nothing to attract an upright, tolerably educated youngster into a Force where morale is low; there has been a long history of political interference undermining esprit de corps; there is little recourse to modern policing techniques; resources are limited and only basic forensic testing is available. As such, it does not offer the prospects of a satisfying career, or the possibilities for self-development. In addition, of course, the GPF has an unsavoury reputation for corruption, and its officers are poorly remunerated.

To return to our ocean-blue submersible, being quietly constructed in a creek off the Waini somewhere, which, it is being suggested, was probably destined for the west coast of Africa. As various observers have pointed out, at a very minimum it suggests a highly organized, sophisticated operation, and indicates how deep the narcotics trade has penetrated in this country. Did the police have any prior knowledge of it – no. Do they patrol our border areas – no. Do they have the resources to patrol our border areas – no. Have they themselves at different levels been penetrated by drug interests – well, there the answer is likely to be yes.

It was none other than President Donald Ramotar himself who told reporters at his media briefing on Friday that the operation in relation to the submersible did not involve the police at all; it was conducted by the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit along with GDF Special Forces, the Coast Guard and the Air Corps. While he dismissed this exclusion as being of no significance, the public came to its own conclusions. What can be inferred is that there was some overseas input, and a further inference might conceivably be that the source of the information decided with which local agencies it would communicate and no doubt coordinate.

Whatever the precise sequence of events and decision-making in relation to the submersible, Minister Rohee and his ministry officials should take note. There is no point in increasing the strength of the Police Force if it is not trusted. As long as the government is not committed to professionalizing the Force then it doesn’t matter how much manpower it has, or how many police stations it can adequately staff, it will be as ineffective as ever.

A professional police officer should be proud of the job he does and the Force of which he is a member. How is that possible, however, if he has to close his (or her) eyes to the requirements of the law to suit some politician or their friends, and if s/he cannot learn the investigative and other skills associated with the occupation elsewhere, and which would afford him or her some measure of job satisfaction?

Above all else, the Minister has not made any serious attempt to address corruption in the Police Force, and unless he does, then everything else is a waste of time. It was announced on Friday that Cabinet had approved the establishment of an independent investigative arm for the Police Complaints Authority (CPA), but significantly, the government is still not taking the step of making it independent of the GPF and giving it some teeth.

In tandem with an independent CPA and a viable programme to begin to take corruption head on, the administration has to look at the matter of police wages and salaries, many of which are not high enough to put an officer beyond the temptation of a petty bribe, never mind a drug trafficker’s hefty inducement. There is no point in attracting 1500-plus new recruits unless they have a tolerable educational standard and have a clean background. But there will be no better quality recruits with police salaries as they are; and there will not be sufficient honest recruits if the GPF is not radically reformed.

The Minister should take the story of the submersible as an indication of the perceptions of the Police Force, and make some decisions in the light of that. If he doesn’t, he will just be wasting taxpayers’ money on new recruits who will not perform any differently from the existing establishment.