The long-awaited Commission of Inquiry report on the events in Linden on July 18, 2012 has now been released. The Commissioners’ findings will surprise no one, although their recommendations for compensation to victims, more especially in relation to those who were killed, reflect an unnecessarily parsimonious approach which many will find hard to defend.
Compensation issues aside, the public wanted answers to certain key questions: in the first place, did the police kill the victims at Linden? If they did, which officer or officers was responsible, and if they did not, then who, precisely, did the shooting? In addition, if the police fired the shots, did Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee give orders for them to shoot? There were other ancillary questions which arose, while the Commission came to a number of conclusions on related matters and put forward a series of recommendations pertaining to the police.
On the central question of whether the police fired the shots which caused three deaths and several injuries, the report came to the conclusion that they did, despite the fact that there was no direct evidence of this. In the first instance their conclusion was based on the fact that there was no evidence that anyone else had a firearm which was discharged, and the police themselves were not fired upon. In addition, the police lookouts (confusingly called ‘snipers’) identified no one hiding.
The police defence against any member of the force being responsible for the deaths centred on the kind of cartridges which had killed the deceased. Police witnesses had testified that for some years the police had not used the 12-gauge 00 pellets which caused the three deaths, and that only numbers four and six were in current use. However, Dr Robinson had told the Commission that the police had provided him with samples of three rounds of ammunition: numbers four, six and 00. The last named was admittedly of lead, and not the copper-coated variety which was removed from the bodies at Linden; however, it did raise the question in the Commissioners’ minds as to how the police were able to provide this sample. Was it, they wondered, a sample of a 00 cartridge in general, or did it demonstrate that the police still had this in stock. If they did, could it be they had a mixture of 00 cartridges in storage, some of which were lead and others of which had a light copper coating?
This question was left unanswered, and may potentially have had bearing on exactly who fired the shots. As it was, in their conclusions the Commissioners said that the “discharge of ammunition itself by the police in the circumstances described by ASP Todd was justified… and there was no clear intention on the part of the police to kill or cause injury to anyone.” However, the shooting of buckshot 00 pellets at persons in the crowd “is another matter and not surprisingly was not owned by anyone.”
There were two policemen who fired shots that day: one was the officer in charge of the Tactical Services Unit, Assistant Superintendant Todd, who told the Commission that he was the only one to discharge a weapon; and the other was Constable Rodney of the Linden Anti-Crime Patrol. ASP Todd testified that his four rounds were fired towards the ground in order to reduce their velocity and avoid injury to persons, an action which the report nevertheless deemed “reckless” given the number of people on the Mackenzie-Wismar bridge at the time.
Constable Rodney testified that that he fired two shots in the Linmine Compound and one over the PPP office on the instructions of his superior on the scene, Sergeant English. Crime Chief Seelall Persaud told the Commission that police firearms go out already loaded, but he was then shown a video of Constable Rodney inserting two rounds in his shotgun, something which Mr Persaud admitted was not standard procedure. The Constable did say when questioned that he had loaded his firearm around 2.20 pm because he felt under threat, but could not say what kind of cartridges he put in the shotgun or even recall their colour. In fact, he could not distinguish between 04, 06 or 00 cartridges. The most enlightenment he could provide on that subject was that the station had two colours in stock – grey and reddish-burgundy. It remained another unanswered question of the inquiry which would certainly have been of some relevance to the issue of who did the shooting.
Of course the Arms Book, which records the issuance of arms and ammunition was produced to the Commission, but the Commissioners declined to rely on it because it contained a number of irregularities. The hierarchy of the force has to take full responsibility for this dereliction; a document of this importance should constitute a record of meticulous accuracy, and the fact that it is not an unimpeachable source of information which in this instance happens to be critical, will raise suspicions in the public mind, quite independent of any other evidence.
Allan Lewis who was shot in the back, fell in the Linmine compound, and a witness testified to seeing him fall, but there was no evidence as to where the other two deceased victims, Shemroy Bouyea and Ron Somerset, fell – yet another unanswered question which might have been important in arriving at more detailed conclusions.
The report would seem to doubt that ASP Todd was the one whose pellets killed the three Lindeners; the Commissioners appeared to accept his contention that he fired towards the ground, in which case the shot would have ricocheted. However, the pellets removed from the bodies of the victims showed no signs of having ricocheted. In addition he testified that he had used 06 ammunition. To find that his firing caused the deaths, said the report, “the Commission has to make the finding that (1) ASP Todd did not fire on the ground, and (2) he had used ‘00’ buckshot with copper coating.”
It went on to say subsequently: “On a balance of probabilities, the fatal shots might very well have been fired by Rodney.” The careful phrasing of this statement reflects uncertainty because there is no direct evidence that this was so.
No one should have been surprised that Mr Rohee was exonerated from having issued instructions to the police during the events of July 18. Both the Minister and senior officers of the force denied it, and no other evidence was forthcoming to contradict this. Of course, the public is only too conscious of the interference by politicians in the operations of the Guyana Police Force that has been going on since PNC days, and which accounts for their scepticism in this instance, but without the evidence, the Commissioners could not have come to any conclusion other than the one they did.
The lack of familiarity of some of the Commissioners with this country, perhaps, caused them to make doubtful excursions into counter-factual terrain, ie ‘what if’ scenarios. The acting Commissioner of Police testified that he had been told by intelligence sources before the march that some persons other than the police would have had guns. The Commissioners thought that this would have been a good reason to rescind the permission which had been granted for the march, and they appeared to be of the view that had this been done it might have obviated the whole problem. Given the strength of feeling in Linden at the time, the likelihood is, however, that the march would have gone ahead in any case.
Their second assumption was that if the leaders and organizers of the march – and they singled out MPs Desmond Trotman and Vanessa Kissoon in the first instance (others were named elsewhere) – had dissuaded the protestors from blocking the bridge and breaking the law in the process, and at a later stage had persuaded them to withdraw from the bridge when asked to do so by the police, “the result of the event would have been completely different.” The fact that they did not do so, says the report, meant that the leaders must take some responsibility for what happened.
What the Commission did not recognize, however, was that this is one of the rare occasions in Guyana when the political leaders had very little purchase on the situation – particularly the APNU leaders and those associated with them. APNU had come to an agreement with the government about raising the electricity rates in Linden earlier in the year, which produced an outcry from the community, and as a consequence the party was obliged to renege on it. Linden had already held a one-day strike over the issue some months earlier, and the resistance to the increases was community driven, with the political leaders trying to play catch-up. Had they urged the people to disperse, it is quite possible they would have been ignored, and would have lost more credibility with the protestors. All of this is not to suggest that it justified them in being complicit in breaking the law, it is merely to observe that they probably lacked the power and influence over the course of events the Commission thought they had.
The Commissioners’ conclusion that the police did not have enough manpower at the scene to deal with the situation was undoubtedly well founded, although whether more boots on the ground would have produced a different outcome is difficult to say. In any event, the report was highly critical of police practices and organisation and as mentioned above, made a large number of recommendations in this regard.
