Dear Editor,
Whenever there are local events that I consider to have serious implications for our daily lives as citizens, I tend nowadays to hold my peace as an individual and allow those organizations representing what we call civic society to make appropriate comment. Recent events however excite a measure of impatience. However, I deeply commend the letter by the Help & Shelter team published in your Stabroek News of Friday 11 (‘Killing of Kelvin Fraser is another example of the failure of promised police reform’).
Of late, many members of the Guyana Police Force afford us by their behaviour toward citizens much occasion for public comment that we dare not allow to pass without notice. I refer in particular to four recent instances involving the police that followed one another within so short a period that they assume the character of an epidemic. The first two on which I now concentrate came clearly and forcefully to viewers on a Capitol News telecast of last week when two young men related in calm, clear and highly credible tones their arrest in relation to a police search for some illegal criminal called ‘Cobra.’ It was their description, with clear photographic evidence of the brutal battery of their bodies by the police, while they were under subduction and could offer no physical defence that I found most appalling. I spare our readers further details.
There followed a complaint of similar brutality compliments of the police, by a citizen named Smith. Yes; more brutality, replete with the epidemic gun-butting of a helpless person in captive condition.
More recently there was the reported incident of yet more serious abuse by the Bartica police and their alleged maltreatment of the owner and manager of a place of entertainment that had earlier refused free entry of a member of the Force to the entertainment within. That matter is “under investigation.” The most recent, and surely the most serious, is the shooting to death of that 16-year-old student at Patentia, West Bank Demerara. Since the media reports tend to suggest the ingredients of a murder charge, I resort to impatient silence.
Well, I read with mixed feelings the newspaper report that in the first incident cited above the two young men ended this episode of their complaint by accepting apology from the police and paradoxically, that is exactly where the danger lies. The God of forgiveness and mercy could well have moved the young complainants to adopt their final course and that I duly respect. However, the God of Mercy is also the God of Order who invests men with wisdom and authority to establish institutions for sustaining good order and discipline among His earthly people. So that while the spiritual advancement of the young complainants would have been well served by their gracious concession, the authority, namely the police, retains the serious obligation of preserving order and public discipline, that compels them to take action that would impress upon these and other miscreant members of the Force that the behaviour complained of would not be tolerated. In short, while I do not propose confinement to barracks or punishment of physical or financial character, I should insist that a record of censure be made against them, that they and their colleagues and the public at large should appreciate that such misbehaviour remains a criminal offence. And the police are under a duty to make publication of that and similar acts of concern. What must be clearly condemned in the most condign terms and disciplinary action is the infliction of harm to any person following his or her arrest and control. The journey to the station must be one of transportation free of torture.
But, dear Editor, I must not be unfair to the police with depleted ranks, a lower quality of recruit attributable in part to such sociological factors as emigration, illiteracy, a level of pay insufficient to reward their expected loyalty, our bribes, and the attractions of the dirty money that abounds in our society. They must contend more and more against the proliferation of daily robberies involving the hand gun which has now assumed the character of an economic implement. The criminal setting out upon his activity does not don his kid gloves, but without consideration for his intended victim or the public at large, is prepared to and does unleash forces for which our police are often numerically, tactically and materially unprepared. I accordingly do not seek to condemn out of hand the extreme measures adopted by our police in response to dangerous criminal activity.
In effect the police are a societal product of the spirit of violence that now straddles our country, a spirit which manifests itself in such diverse ways as domestic violence, murder, reckless use of the motor vehicle, child molestation, rape and even in that virulent impatience manifested on our roads in the form of honking of the horn amidst an apparent desire to move our follow-man out of our way.
And that is why I find great difficulty with the public relations attitudes of the police. Every time we observe what we regard as a serious act of police oppression, we strain our faculties to see or hear expressions of condemnation from the highest levels of the Force as well as the Police Complaints Authority. It is noted with deep regret and a measure of profound shame and disappointment that one minister gave his blessings to a certain degree of “roughing-up” of prisoners already brought into subjection. That aberration apart, we wait and want urgently to hear that the Commissioner has expressed concern and taken action ahead of the public complaints which only attract the worn-out and insulting response that “the matter is under investigation.”
Don’t our police recognize that they need our co-operation and respect just as we daily stand in need of their service and protection? They have a most difficult assignment, we acknowledge, but they would be of greatest service to our community by engaging the public mind and earning our cooperation and regard by honesty and frankness as they seek to afford us the protection their motto advertises.
Yours faithfully,
Leon O Rockcliffe
