Dear Editor,
I wish to raise a concern with the Minister of Home Affairs, Commissioner of Police, Traffic Chief and the nation as a whole.
On the evening of April 21, 2012 I was driving slowly while taking my fiancée home after a social event. As we passed Fort Wellington Police Station on the West Coast of Berbice we were overtaken by a fawn AT 192 Carina and two gentlemen between ages 25-30 years stopped us.
They claimed to be police officers, dressed in plain clothes without any form of identification and instructed us to, “Put on your interior lights and drive to the station.”
I co-operated and when we got to the station I was told that my vehicle has to be searched for arms and ammunition, drugs and narcotics. I exited my vehicle and opened all my doors and asked the ‘so-called’ officers if they were satisfied. They then asked my fiancée what her name was and where she was living; I asked her to co-operate and she did. They searched my vehicle, checked my documents and were trying to harass me.
I then asked them if I was done here and if I could go, and they said yes. Before I knew it they jumped in their car and sped away.
They made us both feel humiliated at the treatment that was meted out to us and I wondered if driving slowly is a problem just as driving too fast is a problem in this country.
I then started quarrelling and a traffic rank was there and told me that those officers didn’t have to identify themselves. He took off his hat and held it in front of me and said that anybody can show you one of these. At this point another rank who was in the upper flat of the station asked if all my papers were in order and I told him yes, and we left.
The reason why I am writing this letter is to let our people of this land know what we as taxpayers have to encounter on our roadways, and about the unprofessional behaviour of these police officers. I want to emphasize these facts that I was overtaken by an unknown vehicle, which was not a police vehicle. My vehicle was checked inside a station compound by those men who claimed to be police officers but still no identification was shown to me. My documents were inspected by these men. I was told by a traffic rank in uniform, who had no part to play in this situation that those men didn’t need to identify themselves to me.
I just wanted to know that if those men were bandits, what would have been my fate and that of my fiancée.
I would be greatly relieved if this matter can be reviewed by those in authority and a proper system put in place where we as Guyanese can be treated as human.
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address provided)
