Dear Editor,
My heart goes out to all those Guyanese who have died so tragically in the horrors of Lusignan and Bartica. It is about time that the whole thinking in the administration of the Guyana Police Force change. I wish to make a few public suggestions.
1. The policy of hot pursuit in any serious felony matter should be strictly adhered to and strictly followed, unless it becomes totally impossible to adhere to in a particular instance, and when the policy is not adhered to senior officers must be made to explain why.
2. The Guyana Police Force should have certain basic equipment and personnel trained to use them. As for example, the Guyana Police Force should have at least two small helicopters, equipped with night vision and spotlights.
3. The Police Force should adopt and emphasize simple technologies, rather than placing emphasis on more police manpower. The authorities should reduce the number of men especially lower ranks. With the money saved in salaries purchase minimum equipment to increase technical capacity to solve crimes and increase pay and benefits of the remaining force. I was a Special Constable in the Guyana Police Force in the 1960s. At that time the Guyana Police Force was about one third its current 5,000 or so manpower. The manpower can be cut as existing law will allow, and the salary savings used to help increase pay.
There is a new technology based on acoustical triangulation, it is pioneered here in the United States, many police forces here in the United States are acquiring it. It is used in gun-spotter technology. It can be fine tuned to filter out all other sounds, and will only recognise sounds fired from a gun, and will distinguish the size and calibre of the gun fired, and the exact spot where fired within a large radius of several square miles. This information can be transmitted instantly in seconds to any part of the world. More importantly it can be transmitted to the Police Headquarters, and at the same time to a strike squad or strike squads or the ground, and at the same time to a helicopter equipped to follow and attack. Information on this type of equipment the government can easily get from sources like the FBI, and magazines catering for security operations like Security Products magazines, which can easily be had online.
Guyana has to be on par, technically and aggressively with national police forces around the world. Those convicts, who escaped the Camp Street jail in 2002, should have been pursued under hot pursuit through Buxton backdam and caught. If that was done, then all the subsequent loss of lives due to followers those criminals attracted, would not have happened.
With a couple of equipped helicopters in the air, directing men on the ground, criminals on the ground would have been easily caught, With shot spotter technology in the air, criminals shooting people can quickly be caught. The emphasis must be placed on brain power rather than manpower to stop the armed criminals in Guyana.
Yours faithfully,
Lennox Wellington
