Latest update April 18th, 2024 12:59 AM
Nov 06, 2012 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
In the modern world the people who run the Guyana Police Force have no modern thinking. I taught philosophy at UG to many of the senior ranks of the police force, including former Commissioner Henry Greene, and Clifton Hicken. After his testimony last Thursday at the Commission of Inquiry into the Linden crisis, as he was leaving, Mr. Hicken glanced at me where I was sitting next to the WPA duo, Tacuma Ogunseye and Desmond Trotman. He asked to see me outside.
I came out and he told me that he would like to have a copy of my research essay which forms my defence of the Jagdeo libel against me. I agree. Hicken will have to contact me to secure a copy. I hope he reads it.
The first section deals specifically with philosophical concepts like ideology, race, power etc. What these senior police officers do with the university education they received is a fascinating curiosity. Why do they turn their backs on what they have learned?
I saw a letter from the Commissioner of Police to the Speaker of the National Assembly. In it the Commissioner explained that he would allow light vehicular traffic through the barricades around Parliament. When the barricades went up, no genius in this entire universe could have known that he/she could drive the mobile metal fences. Common sense would have told that driver you couldn’t go through because all the streets were cordoned off. There was no indication or sign to let drivers of light vehicles know they can pass through.
I was at the People’s Parliament when the barriers went up. I showed the Commissioner’s letter to all the senior ranks outside Parliament. All of them said they have no instructions and they cannot accept what is in the letter. Three times I called M. Brumell who knows me. The response was that he is at a meeting.
I have the right to my belief and my belief is that I feel he did not want to speak to me. I am saying that it is a policy that lacks common sense if you barricade the streets around Parliament but you still will allow light traffic, you left no sign to that effect. How are drivers to know they can pass through?
Here is another example of lack of commonsense in the police force. I went up to the Parika market last Sunday with a team from the People’s Parliament and Lincoln Lewis of the TUC.
Trouble was brewing over vending on the back street outside the market from where vendors have refused to move. When we got there, a bus load of policemen, some armed, were on the scene. They were taking instructions from a RDC official, Mr. Fowler. In my presence Fowler ordered the police to remove the stalls and make the necessary arrests. There and then I intervened.
My point to the police was to ascertain the locus standi of Mr. Fowler. Was he the head of the RDC for Region Three. Was he in charge of market operations? The answer to both questions the police were able to ascertain. There answer was no. By what logic then were the Leonora police taking instructions from this gentleman?
I insisted that the police hear from the Chairman of Region Three and the head of the market committee. When contact was made with the RDC, the decision was at variance with what Mr. Fowler had issued to the police. If we were not there, based on Fowler’s edicts, there would have been an unpleasant situation. But after Linden and Agricola what were the police doing with those guns at the Parka Market last Sunday morning when none of the vendors were in any threatening mood?
After Linden and Agricola, the nation will hear about so-called changes and reform but we will see no implementation. The police will remain the same backward school that it is at the moment. Just wait and you will see in the coming days; it is back to bully tactics, stupid thinking and unprofessional conduct.
But maybe we are witnessing the final insult. Gunmen are killing suspected drug men in Georgetown and are doing so as if they are ghosts. One theory is that the police don’t care when drug wars break out. But the hit men are not only drug men. Most of the time they are hired gunmen who will also take a job to target someone even if that person is a nun or a monk or child. That is their profession.
Will there be an arrest. Yes! Another 100 years from now.
JAGDEO ADDING MORE DANGER TO GUYANA AND THE REGION
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