Dear Editor,
The frequency with which the issue of police corruption has/is been addressed at training courses, by letter writers, and editors of the various dailies in Guyana, indicates widespread consciousness of its disturbing presence.
We do not know the true extent of this problem because many citizens do not report it and police culture dictates officers hide each other’s wrongdoing. Nevertheless, we know enough to realize that police corruption is a problem in Guyana and indeed for most nations. This is true even for those nations we tend to turn to for understanding and guidance in our response to this matter.
In the United Kingdom in 2002, an internal investigation into the Metropolitan Police concluded that the force was corrupt, and that organized crime had infiltrated Scotland Yard “at will,” by bribing corrupt officers. In 2014 Britain had 3000 allegations of police corruption, with the most prevalent areas being drug crimes, bribery, theft and fraud.
In the USA most writers and researchers on this matter have concluded that police corruption has been a problem since the early history of policing. The USA, (like the UK) recorded high levels of police corruption in the area of organized crime and drugs specifically. This tendency in rich countries for police corruption to be tied to organized crime is useful to understand and note.
Generally police corruption is divided into two group – meat eaters and grass eaters. In the developed countries corrupt police are meat eaters. That is, they are unusually mostly involved in crimes stated above. Immigrants from the third world, learn this quickly when they are dragged before the court for offering patrol officers bribes for assaulting their spouses, traffic violation etc. American police are rarely involved in these types of corruption.
Grass eaters are like a disease in third world societies. These are policemen who are opportunist, they shake you down for a towel, a Granger, a lunch. They demand bribes when citizens are guilty of traffic violations, prostitution and small scale gambling. They go for the low hanging fruits so to speak. The ordinary citizen tends to refer to them as ‘hustlers.’
This does not mean that in small third world countries there are not meat eaters – there are. However the extent of organized crime is not as large or sophisticated enough to accommodate large amount of players (in the sense of police involvement). Secondly, most citizens of third world countries are only concerned about the drug trade, when it is plainly the cause of the latest brutal killings. Since most citizens are not involved in the use and distribution of illegal drugs, they otherwise pay the activity no mind. An attitude that is appreciated by dealers and corrupt police. In Guyana it is the grass eaters, with whom the average citizen is most familiar and consider a bother. So, lets’ examine its presence.
Police corruption becomes widespread when there are those prepared to offer and those willing to receive. The offering usually happens because most citizens guilty of traffic offences and victimless crimes, find it most expedient to give a bribe than to waste (as they perceive it) possible days at court hearings. So, as citizens we must take some of the blame for its presence.
Takers are police officers of low morals. As I noted in a previous letter, police corruption is partly as a result of having to recruit from environments in which many socially unacceptable behaviours are acceptable. So, corrupt officers were likely dishonest prior to joining the organization.
Secondly, police corruption occurs because police training has not been able to override the influences of the environment from which police officers originate. In the daily Chronicle of 1st February 2019, under caption “Guyanese counting on you,” we are offered an insight of the content of the training offered to recruits at the Police Training School. While one course is listed as “human rights,” I am not sure what is its content. Does this course cover ‘ethics in policing’? If so, how much time of the entire training programme is dedicated to this matter?
Low salaries have been seen as the cause for the presence of police corruption. Police do receive relatively low salaries compared to other professions that are as stressful, require personal dedication, and carry the risk of bodily harm. Police see their low pay as signaling that their profession is lowly valued. But Schmalleger makes the point that no matter how much police salaries increase it will never be able to compete with the staggering amount of money to be made through dealing in contraband etc.
Since at present, we are only able to attract recruits from mainly disorganized communities, and training is not working, then we must seek to conceive practical actions that can be taken. Things that the authorities can do to make committing these acts of corruption a little more challenging to undertake. So, let us consider some actions that might be helpful.
First, police officers need to be moved around regularly. I know this can/will be disruptive to family life, but it is necessary. In any event implicit in choosing to be a nurse, police, postal worker, fireman, soldier etc, is the possibility, nay, the likelihood, of being transferred to various locations. Moving police officers around regularly, makes it difficult for them to ‘settle-in.’ Businessmen who want the police presence in the vicinity of his or her establishment and are willing to give cheap gifts and a lunch need time to assess and build a relationship with the young police patrolling their street. The young police looking for a regular ‘small piece,’ needs time to identify those willing to do a ‘deal’ before making his proposition. Both parties need a ‘getting to know you period.’ Regular transfers reduces the opportunities for this to be completed.
For those who believe that a businessman offering patrol police gifts for their regular presence in the vicinity of his premises, is no big thing, think again. If the police is known to be in a particular area most of the time, then the businesses and citizens not in that vicinity become soft targets for criminals.
Second, we should decriminalize certain vice crimes – prostitution and petty gambling. Taking these out of police jurisdiction will remove the possibility of police corruption in these areas. While these suggestions are no permanent fix, they are things we can implement immediately. Achieving an absence in police corruption will take massive changes in our socialization process among other things.
Denmark, New Zealand and Finland have for extended periods been named as the countries with the lowest level of police corruption. Finland claims that their low level of police corruption is linked to their “heavily ingrained societal values that are shared amongst the population, also there being adequate wages and low disparities of income for the majority of the country.”
This is what I would call characteristics of a ‘just society’ and Guyana would do well to emulate Finland in this regard, if indeed it is concerned about police corruption, indeed corruption amongst professional groups in general.
Yours faithfully,
Claudius Prince
