Dear Editor,

I bet the 911 operator who hung up on my emergency and sucked her teeth a few weeks ago thought she would get off scot free, and that I would shut up and let the matter go silently by. I bet, too, that the Commander of Berbice thought that I had let the matter go, but both of them are sadly mistaken. I have prepared letters which I plan to send to the Home Affairs Minister and Commissioner of Police, as well as the Office of the President.

This nonsense has got to stop somewhere and somehow. In addition to the documentation about my situation that morning at 1.25am when thieves were breaking into my home downstairs, and the Guyana Police Force’s 911 operator in the operations room in New Amsterdam refused to send me assistance, I am documenting another pathetic story which I heard from a friend a few days ago.

He had telephoned 911 a few weeks ago as thieves were breaking into a structure at Chapel Street in New Amsterdam. To his amazement, the operator told him that there was no police vehicle available and the call ended.

I believe that the police do these things often to members of the public, especially in locations where people usually accept these mediocre services from the force. Locations like the Corentyne, where it is a known fact that any kind of nonsense is accepted by the population are the hot spots for such unprofessional police behaviour. Who will report these cases and bring them to the media’s eye? Who dares to do such?

The time is ripe for the government to put a stop to this nonsense being perpetrated daily by the Guyana Police Force. We need urgent reforms and assistance from overseas to show them how to police a nation of just under a million people. They have got no inkling as to how to mingle and talk to the population. If a 911 operator has no courtesy and would not send any help to a caller who is complaining about a robbery in progress (she did not even have to budge from her seat to get help), then we have really big national security concerns.

While the Berbice Commander came to Berbice a few months ago amidst much fanfare and high expectations from the media and communities, nothing much has been done here to effect a real change to the force in ‘B’ Division. I am still waiting for his officers to come and take my statement on the above-mentioned matter. Has he started the investigations? Are the 911 tapes from that night still there, and if they are, have they been compromised? The Police Complaints Authority will hear from me.

Yours faithfully,
Leon Jameson Suseran