Buoyed by the presence of the Prime Minister and Minister of Home Affairs, the top brass of the Guyana Police Force participated in a symposium last Saturday discussing Integrity in Policing. The cynic might ask what there is to discuss since everyone knows what integrity involves and there is a general perception that the Force does not meet the standard at any level. As recently as two days ago a plain clothes policeman shot dead a teenager in Stabroek Market who eyewitnesses said was about to rob his wife. Then there was the shooting to death of Orin Boston in his Essequibo home by a member of a twelve-party, fully armed SWAT team which had no search warrant. There were too the cases of Peter Headley and Kevin Andries, and in none of these has there been any indication of action being taken. (The first-mentioned is still with the Police Complaints Authority.)
Tackling corruption and restoring integrity to the Force is not a simple matter, not least because the problem is by no means confined to the lower ranks. But nothing daunted Commissioner (ag) Nigel Hoppie as he itemised some examples of a lack of integrity among officers, although not the examples of the illicit use of force cited above. He mentioned where some officers effecting arrests would use indecent language and physically harass suspects or perpetrators of crimes. In a reference to the behaviour of the traffic police he recognised that there were issues surrounding ranks withholding motorists’ documents for the purposes of illegal gain: “…it is straightforward; it’s accepting a bribe or a gift from citizens for policing services,” he was quoted as saying.
While emphasising that public trust and confidence remained important to police policy and practices he said it was endangered by the actions of some ranks. “Some frontline ranks engaged members of the public in an impolite, unethical and disrespectful manner,” he said, and this resulted in “dissatisfaction with police services.”
Then there was the matter of failing to respond to crime reports, a problem which citizens have been complaining about for years. The Commissioner was frank about saying that officers would habitually assert that vehicles were not available or refuse to take a report because the incident had occurred outside the station district despite the fact they were supposed to send transit reports to the relevant district.
In addition there was the attitude of some officers to reports of gender-based violence: “Ranks would sometimes urge reporters to resolve the matter with the abuser rather than adopting the laid-down procedure. [They] treat reports from male victims in particular as a sort of joke, laughing at the reporter,” said Mr Hoppie. As far as addressing these matters is concerned he adverted to the training programmes conducted by the GPF which focused on the core values of policing, but there were cases, he said, where disciplinary action was taken or criminal charges brought.
As for how these problems should be addressed, Commissioner Hoppie said there should be a review of and amendments to the GPF’s Standing Orders and Standard Operating Procedures in consonance with best practices and international standards. No one will quarrel with this, more particularly as it emerged after the Boston killing that the SWAT team has no SOPs that anyone knows about. However important this might be, on its own it will not address the larger issue.
But Mr Hoppie had another suggestion to make, and this one is less commonly heard. He placed emphasis on the low academic requirements for entry into the Police Force, which contributed to the low-grade conduct of some officers not excluding the use of excessive force as well as corruption. At present all that is required is sound primary-level schooling, and he was of the view that the criteria for admission should reflect higher educational qualifications. By implication Minister Robeson Benn appeared to support this when he said, “We need to improve the intake of the police force beyond the question of diversity.”
The Commissioner is not wrong about this; police work involves a familiarity with the laws and the rules, a respect for the public in speech and manner and often a certain nicety of judgement. The social environment is much more complex than it used to be decades ago, and members of the Force have to be capable of rising above their own inherent biases or assumptions to act within the boundaries of the law as well as with fairness. A primary education is not necessarily the best grounding for this.
There are various things which will impede attracting better educated recruits, and one is simply the rates of pay. Prime Minister Mark Phillips made passing reference to salaries, welfare, conditions of work, equipment and scholarships for members of the Force to improve their professional capability as issues the government was committed to dealing with. Exactly when this will happen is not at all clear, but in addition to that it is not just current salaries and benefits which will discourage more educated applicants.
A force which is perceived by the public as being corrupt, which is not trusted, and suffers from low morale is not going to be the first choice for someone mulling what kind of vocation he or she wants to pursue. Building back some kind of esprit de corps, however, will among other things require that the politicians cease interfering in the GPF, something which not surprisingly was not raised by the participants at the symposium. The politicisation of the Police Force over many decades has done enormous damage; apart from anything else it has undermined the hierarchical structure, allowing certain officers to appeal to the political authorities over the heads of their superiors, and to take instructions from those authorities.
The current morass over the Police Service Com-mission and the allegations which swirl around that body as well as subsequent events, typify the problem, and do nothing to help the image of the GPF as a professional institution insulated from our political antagonisms. Where senior appointments are concerned political loyalties to either major party cannot trump integrity. As long as anyone who has influence in the matter of police appointments is concerned not with rooting out corruption as a primary goal, but with other considerations the GPF is not going to make much progress on the integrity front. Neither, it should be added, will it succeed in attracting many better educated applicants.
In the end the problem of the GPF is one of accountability, and by extension, transparency. It is true that there is a Police Complaints Authority, which investigates complaints and recommends action to the Commissioner which he is obliged to act upon, but it is dependent on the investigative capacity of the GPF. This, it must be said, is conducive neither to its efficiency, effectiveness, independence nor impartiality. In addition, it lacks a certain transparency, so citizens often do not know what the outcomes of investigations are. One supposes, too, that it probably needs expanding in terms of staffing. The issue is how much transparency and accountability does the government really want? And is control of the Force still a major objective? Integrity and political manoeuvring are not good bedfellows.
