When announcing that he had asked the Regional Security Service to investigate the allegations of Sergeant Dion Bascom about a police cover-up in the Fagundes murder case, President Irfaan Ali commented that he had always said the ruling party was governing with transparency. In relation to the same matter his Vice President had on an earlier occasion assured the media that the PPP would not condone any illegal act.
Whatever the government might be doing the police are doing their own thing, and that has little connection with transparency and certainly does not suggest they will vigorously pursue any illegality within their own ranks. Where the latter is concerned they have fallen back on outright denials, impugning the motives of the whistleblower and insisting he return to work.
Acting Commissioner Clifton Hicken told a press conference that Detective Sergeant Bascom’s statements were in breach of the Code of Conduct of the Police Force, since he is a serving officer. As a result, he said, he had ordered an immediate investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility. That body’s conclusions were sent to the Office of the DPP, and yesterday we reported that the police had been advised to institute several criminal charges against Mr Bascom.
The upper echelons of the force are not waiting for any findings by the RSS; their aim appears to be to ensure that the Detective Sergeant is so discredited his voice will be silenced and the police will be able to sink back into their old comfortable ways. So now it seems they will charge him for speaking out of turn, when they have already sent him back out to work in Essequibo, despite the fact that he had requested witness protection from President Ali. As of yesterday he had not had a response to that request.
The police do not seem to recognise that charging Mr Bascom will not make the allegations go away, and to be in such a hurry to charge him before the RSS has reported will only convince people that they have something to hide. They themselves had referred the Sergeant’s allegations to the Office of Professional Responsibility, although how they could possibly think that the average member of the public would take that seriously could only be marvelled at. It would be a case of the police investigating themselves, and as Mr Bascom himself pointed out, one of those reviewing its findings would be the very officer whom he had alleged had received money to bury the Fagundes case.
Commissioner Hicken has laid great stress on the fact that the Detective Sergeant is compromised and has merely made his allegations to get himself out of a tight spot after his arrest by CANU. Unfortunately for the force’s most senior officer it does not follow that because Mr Bascom is compromised in relation to another matter – if indeed he is – that his allegations are necessarily untrue. In any case, anyone looking to dream up accusations in order to get themselves out of a difficulty is not going to think up anything that could land them in greater danger than the one they are in already.
Another motive which has been cited involved one of those labyrinthine Guyanese stories about competitors in the gold industry, with one of whom Mr Bascom was close and who was supposedly the driving force behind the allegations. Again one has to wonder whether that would be sufficient to persuade someone to put themselves in imminent danger by making outrageous accusations. What the story did do was expose the habit of moonlighting by police officers, something which was permitted by the force, and which Mr Jagdeo at his press conference said would have to change. If that happens, it would at least be an advance on what obtains at present.
It may be that even if the generalities are true, there are details in the Sergeant’s story which are not quite accurate. However, even where those are concerned so far the police have made themselves look rather foolish. First there was the matter of Mr Rondell Bacchus, who was initially a suspect in the Fagundes killing and who the police insisted had come into them in the company of his lawyer after Mr Bascom had claimed that he was the one who had brought him to headquarters. The police even made public a photo of Mr Bacchus being questioned by police with his lawyer present, hardly evidence that the latter had taken him in. They should have been embarrassed when Mr Bacchus himself went public to say that Mr Bascom indeed had gone with him to the police at his request. Mr Bacchus’s attorney Damien Da Silva confirmed to this newspaper that he met Mr Bacchus at CID but did not take him there.
And then there was the strange little story of the equipment which can triangulate the position of suspects who use cell-phones. The Detective Sergeant had claimed that he was one of the officers on the scene following Fagundes’ murder, and they were able to track the phone used by the prime suspect as well as the calls he made before and after the shooting. He went on to say the evidence was destroyed.
The police vehemently denied that Mr Bascom was ever on the scene, which is not something which can be proved or disproved at this point, but they also said they had no tracking equipment, something repeated by Crime Chief Wendell Blanhum. The GPF was even more unequivocal in its rebuttal, saying, “It is important to firmly state that there is no equipment existing anywhere in the world in 2022 that could achieve such a magical task.”
If nothing else this level of ignorance underlines why the force is still so backward, but it also demonstrates the degree to which it has lost institutional memory. Anyone old enough remembers Mr Roger Khan and his ‘magical’ equipment, at least one set of which came into police hands, and was displayed to the public by Commissioner Henry Greene in 2009. Attorney Nigel Hughes representing Mr Bascom speculated whether it might have been misplaced, although given the way the police treat vehicles it may be that this sensitive equipment is no longer functional. In any event, the police have been caught out on this one, so would they like to say what happened to the equipment?
It might be added that as anyone who has watched an American or UK true crime programme knows, cell-phone companies can provide the police with information on calls made to and from a given mobile phone (although not their content, just the numbers) and can say where the phone was in relation to a given cell tower. Did the police ever ask the cell-phone companies for assistance in relation to the Fagundes killing? Even if evidence supposedly from the triangulation equipment was indeed destroyed, theoretically the cell-phone companies should be able to help.
The problem with the police is that although in an abstract sense they know why they are not trusted by the public, in a real sense they lack the capacity to see themselves as others see them. And this failing is very much in evidence in the matter of the Bascom allegations. If indeed the Detective Sergeant’s allegations had no substance to them, why were they so driven by the need to behave as if they had things to hide in the matter? Instead of targeting him, why did they not indicate their openness to an inquiry from outside the force, which in any case they now have to face in the shape of the RSS?
In the perception of the public all they have succeeded in doing is rightly or wrongly conveying an impression they are trying to cover up a cover-up.
