On December 11th last year, more than four months ago, there was a confrontation in the Providence Police Station between two civilians during which a gunshot was fired and the cops fled for cover.
To date, the Guyana Police Force is yet to pronounce publicly on the case or act on any of the multitude of issues in play. Given the frequency of serious crime, it would be easy to consign this incident to the bottom of the to-do list but that would be a grave misjudgment considering what is at stake.
The incident had its genesis on the day before, December 10, 2022. On January 27th this year, the complainant, truck driver Anand Goodluck posted a video lamenting the police inaction on the matter. He related that on December 10th he was confronted at the Eccles Industrial Site by an employee of a contractor. Mr Goodluck was told that he could not park his truck there neither could be uplift a piece of machinery that his employer had sent him to collect. Mr Goodluck was unmoved and the employee then reported to the scion of the contractor on what had transpired. The son then turned up and berated Mr Goodluck while using indecent and threatening language. Mr Goodluck began to record what was happening on the phone and this further incensed the son of the contractor whereupon he instructed that the phone be seized. Mr Goodluck resisted the attempt to seize the phone.
Around 15 minutes later the son returned with two security guards on a motorbike. One flung open the truck’s door and Mr Goodluck said he was struck in the left ear with a gun and his assailant demanded the phone. The gun was then menacingly pointed in his face and at this point he gave up the phone and the guards left.
Mr Goodluck then ventured to the Providence Police Station to make a report and according to him, the ranks took the information that he provided but as he was doing so, he told a rank to take him to the hospital since he was suffering from severe pain due to the injury he sustained from the security guard’s gun.
The next day, the driver said that he, a brother and his mother went back to the station to check on the status of his report but were told to wait.
As he was waiting, Mr Goodluck said, “where I was standing I would’ve looked over in the Shell Gas Station from Providence station…when I looked over the road I saw the said vehicle that came…and the same said two security guard over the road.” When he informed the police of the men’s presence, the rank told him that he was in the process of calling the patrol van to go over to the gas station to apprehend the men.
Due to the police’s sloth in apprehending the men, Mr Goodluck said his “… brother decided that he gon take out his phone to video the man them over the road and go over the road and start videoing the men them…” He noted that when the father of the man who had approached him the previous day and his two security guards saw what his brother was doing so, the man ordered the guards to take away the phone.
“They begin to run me brother over the road and me brother run in the Providence station… just to get the cell phone from me brother because he video them…one of the security guard… he go and deal me mother a slap in she face… and the two police officers deh right deh,” Mr Goodluck related.
He recalled that during the confrontation he was looking at one of the security guards who had a gun. “And as I coulda look at the next security I see he gat a big gun in he waist tuck in he pants… when the security guard realize that I know he gat a firearm in he waist… he decide that he gon reach for the gun [and] when he reach for the gun, I reach for the gun same time with he cause I know that he gon take out the gun to start shooting… with me and him now one scuffle, I snatch unto the gun, he snatch unto the gun and the gun deh in we hand and the gun fire off and he loose the gun… when the gun fire off everybody drop pon the ground, the two police run out the station, I leave with the gun in me hand,” Mr Goodluck said in the video.
One can easily rattle off a dozen criminal charges the court should decide on in relation to multiple defendants and particularly since the main complainant seems prepared to testify. The police had prepared a file on the matter for the Chambers of the Director of Public Prosecutions but it is unclear what has happened to it.
This case underlines much of what is wrong with law and order. Significant sections of the public have little faith in the police to take action on their complaints and this relates both to the capacity of the police and their will. They can be easily influenced not to undertake some investigations, simply drag them out or worse, work along with the accused. There have been many such accusations against the police force and the fact that Mr Goodluck’s complaint has not been acted on is further evidence of this.
Second, the company in this case is known to have close ties to people in the government and in the early days of the investigation there were reports of political influence being brought to bear. That no charge has yet been brought does lend credence to the view that something untoward has occurred. The investigation must be taken to finality.
Third, the brute use of enforcers by businesspersons and others has no place in a civilised society and it must be cracked down upon. It undermines the rule of law and creates conditions for extrajudicial activity and confrontations with rival interests.
With the ever evolving security risks facing the country on a number of fronts, the police force has to get serious about investigations like Mr Goodluck’s and invest less in arranging dance contests and cook-up rice competitions.
