The Guyana Police Force felt obliged to issue a long press statement on June 30 to respond to allegations against it of “willful negligence” in enforcing the law, especially with regard to the offences of domestic violence and creating a noise nuisance. The Force retorted with the old cliché that its policy was one of “zero tolerance” to reports of both offences.
It then went on to argue densely that “This continuous ‘beating up’ of the Police Force on matters without any evidence begs the question of what is the motive. The Police Force considers this type of poor journalism unmistakably designed to frustrate the relentless efforts of its ranks to enforce the laws and to sully its image and reputation.”
That long-winded riposte was not quite logical but, for good measure, the Force went on to recite its evidence of last resort – statistics! The police seem to be mesmerized by the notion that the infallible measure of law enforcement is the number of ‘cases’ made; the more of them, so the reasoning goes, the less crime there should be.
As far as domestic violence was concerned, the Force claimed that up to about mid-year, it had received 2,488 reports, resulting in 694 ‘cases’ being made and 530 ‘warnings’ being given at the request of the victims. For noise nuisance, 68 persons have been charged and 41 ‘cases’ are in progress before the courts. For road safety, ‘Operation Safeway’ resulted in 101,236 ‘cases’ having been made against persons for breaching the laws since October 2007.
Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee is often wont to wield the weapon of large numbers himself. He claimed last year that there were 214 active community policing groups with over 4,047 members throughout the country, with resources such as vehicles, boats, motor cycles and other items. He reported in March that community policing groups effected over 1,000 arrests, initiated over 500 charges and conducted over 300,000 patrols in addition to an unlimited number of hours of station duties over the last two years.
But do more arrests mean that citizens are more safe? Does the incantation of numbers magically demolish accusations against the police of poor performance? Bigger numbers of ‘cases’ do not necessarily signify better security. Without making a comparison to the frequency of reports and the severity of the crimes, sterile statistics are meaningless. To make sense, the Police Force must convince the public that the ‘cases’ have had a deterrent effect; that offenders have been punished; that the victims of the crimes have been compensated and are protected, as far as possible, from a recurrence and, as a result, that human security has improved measurably.
As far as the crimes of domestic violence, noise nuisance, road safety, trafficking in persons and community security are concerned, this is hardly true. The problem, however, is not one of “willful negligence” but of resource deficiency. The Force has been working with various non-governmental organisations and official agencies to improve the training of its recruits to confront these crimes. It has also established a Domestic Violence Unit.
But it should not boast emptily about “zero tolerance” because it has neither sufficient personnel to deploy on ‘beat duty’ crime-prevention tasks nor the boats and vehicles to visit some remote rural and near-hinterland crime scenes where many of these abuses occur. Given the chronic manpower shortage and equipment deficit, station sergeants face a dilemma of allocating their limited resources to respond to other serious crimes such as armed robberies and murder.
There is a real manpower problem and unless the number of uniformed personnel is increased substantially and rural stations are re-equipped there can be little improvement in the Force’s performance. Until there is such reform, citizens could expect to hear more meaningless numbers when they complain.
