Dear Editor,
Every time I pause to read these days, the Guyana Police Force (GPF) is on the job, on the move, in the action, and registering some success. Is this the same GPF from two months ago? Two years ago? Two decades ago?
Clearly it is the same force, other than for some management changes involving very senior levels. What is different today is that there are new political bosses, with new attitudes, new standards, new values, and new (clean) hands. Men and women serving have to shape up or ship out. They have no hold on, no secrets for, their political superiors, because the latter have no discernible Achilles heel to aim at or that is exploitable. The days of mutual backscratching and reciprocal covering-up are over and gone, if all things hold.
Still, hopeful citizens must guard against over-expectations. The massive erosion, visible and obvious, in the quality of life arena is wide and deep and durable; it will require a monumental effort at the top to clean house and get things on the right track, as well as a sea change in individual outlooks down in the trenches. The present deplorable state of crime-fighting came about through deliberate neglect, self-involvement, and even tacit approval of both bosses and boys. It is where one could not move against the other, or either without the next.
In the new environment of today, seasoned men (ole scamps) will push the outer edges of the envelope to test how far they can get; and some citizens will come bringing their own envelopes to make things happen. In short, people must be neither unrealistic nor naïve; as police sloth and malfeasance are just too ingrained to be eradicated overnight. Thus, the public must manage itself and it does so best through being a watchdog, a vigilant, vocal one.
Another thing for the public to chew on is the huge and unknown number of guns around in this small society. It is my opinion that amnesties make very little impression on the overall numbers. I suppose then that this becomes an issue of attrition through interception; these are not going away voluntarily.
In the interim, the foreigners are doing their part in money and personnel, some of which is behind the scenes. I believe that the corner can be turned and in the not-too-distant future. Already, men are bemoaning falling revenues (slow business) which is a euphemism for the closer oversight of Big Brother really watching.
Last, as I watch the latest chapter in the local police story unfolding, I shake my head thinking that purchased loyalties and condoned practices, relative to the GPF, did serve their nefarious individual purposes, while costing the people. Today’s development in the streets and the news underscore who used whom and at whose expense. All that is left now are scare tactics and empty continuing grandstanding.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
