Nearly a week after a brazen, attempted robbery on a business executive in the city there has been no word from the police on if recently installed surveillance cameras picked up any footage of value in the probe.
Director of bauxite mining company, Guyana Industrial Minerals, Ian Christie was the victim of the attempted robbery and he is displeased with the manner in which the matter is being handled by the police more so since the newly installed city surveillance system seems to be of no help.
Christie told the Sunday Stabroek that around 5.42 am last Monday he was accosted by two armed bandits at the corner of Alexander Street and North Road during his morning run.
“Suddenly two motorcycles just rode around past me and did the U-turn and one of them jumped off and pointed a gun right at me from about a meter away,” Christie said.
“I screamed loudly and then I very quickly pulled the pin on my personal alarm….there is a strap on it which I wrap around my wrist and then you just pull that up very quickly and it makes a very loud alarm,” Christie explained.
He said this alerted a passer-by and caused his attackers to flee. “When the alarm went off they decided that this is getting risky for them so he jumped back on the bike and they rode up North Road,” Christie said.
A passing motorist subsequently picked up Christie and they gave chase after the bandits. “We chased them for a block or two but they disappeared,” he said.
A report was lodged at the Alberttown Police Station.
Christie stated that it was his hope that the newly-installed city-wide surveillance camera systems are actually in full operation and might be able to trace the criminals.
However, it remains unclear whether the system is presently operational and what are its capabilities in assisting in crime fighting and traffic violations.
Several calls by Stabroek News to Crime Chief (ag) Michael Kingston and Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan for responses went unanswered.
Late last month, the system was unveiled during a media tour of the facility, which is situated aback of the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, at Liliendaal.
During the ceremony, it was announced that with the system in place, the movements of citizens in and around the city can now be monitored following the activation of a Huawei-built Safe City Command Centre for the CCTV Surveillance system, a component of the US$36 million National Broadband Expansion Project.
It was said that the system is operational 24-hours per day and monitors sections of Georgetown and the East Bank of Demerara. Among some of the areas are Avenue of the Republic, Water Street, Lombard Street, Brickdam, Lime Street and Croal Street.
Christie said he revisited the scene recently during which he noticed several cameras around although some might have had obscured vision of the area.
“The film certainly would have showed that something was happening. It may not have identified the criminals but at least you would have seen the movement,” he said.
Christie said he believes that the matter will remain unsolved since to date he has not gotten a feedback from the police.
“My gut feeling is that this won’t go anywhere…even though they got all these new cameras everywhere, I don’t know if they put the effort into it….I won’t have minded if they come back to me after a couple of days and say look we have looked at the pictures during that time period and it was kind of fuzzy or whatever,” he added.
Christie described the experience as frightening while noting that the incident was the second he had experienced within the past two months. As a result he has been forced to stop his morning runs.
