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Nov 30, 2014 Features / Columnists, My Column
When I was a young teacher someone once said to me that there is only a thin line between the criminal and the people who enforce the law. The person said to me that a few things caused people to shift to one side of the line or the other. One of those things was the parent.
Many of us grew up in households in which we firmly believed that our parents would kill us if we dared to do anything to embarrass them. And it seemed that just about anything other than excellence or near excellence in school would embarrass them.
In the rural community, those parents had arms that reached into other households so that our friends also came under their influence. The people who became law enforcers came from such situations. The common thief came from the same society, but he did not have that lid on his actions, so he was free to roam and to let his imagination roam. He was susceptible to the pull of others.
There are those who get among the ranks of the law enforcers, but their minds remain criminal. These are the people who, while they work, get enticed by the property of others and plot how to use their skills to acquire if not all, part of other people’s property.
Not so long ago, the country got the news that a group of soldiers swooped down on a passenger boat heading to Bartica and removed a young man who happened to be transporting cash—lots of it—from Georgetown to a source in Bartica.
The soldiers were there to protect national assets along the Essequibo River and in the islands. In fact, they were housed on one of the islands, with one of them being very intelligent. The more intelligent some people tend to be, the more they seem to want to put their minds to undertaking criminal enterprise.
So it was that this lieutenant of the coast guard led his men to that boat heading to Bartica. They killed the young man, and took his money. The police got to them. Under normal conditions that would have been the end of the matter, but the police also had criminal minds. They split the money and attempted to siphon it off. They too were caught.
History will record that the soldiers have been sentenced to death and the policemen are supposed to be doing jail time.
But even before all this; way back in the 1970s there were law enforcers who used their cover to commit crimes. One policeman entered the home of a Chinese man on the East Bank of Demerara and got a death blow to the head with a lead pipe, inside the man’s house.
Another case was reported in South Sophia. A taxi driver was heading home when he was confronted by a group of gunmen. One shot and robbed him; his relatives called for the police who were not too long in arriving. When it was all over the relatives were convinced that the policemen who responded were the same people who robbed the taxi driver.
Then there was the case of a man who opted to transport some cocaine aboard the ship on which he got some work to a foreign country. The network must have been porous, because some policemen got wind of the drug and confronted the man whom they robbed. The man turned to their bosses to get back his drug but got nowhere.
I hasten to say that he never learnt the lesson about once bitten twice shy. He collected another set of cocaine and is now doing hard time in a jail in Scotland. He is going to be a guest of that country for a long time.
Two weeks ago I learnt about another group of men who were once on the side of the law. Both were soldiers, one of them had gone absent without leave. Having chosen a life of crime they targeted a family who had gone to a commercial bank to uplift some money.
Having spotted their prey they opted to follow them to La Bonne Intention, where they made their move. They grabbed the money but did not get far. Both are now dead. Community reaction stopped them in their tracks. A car knocked them off the motorcycle and rested on one of them who died at the scene. The other died yesterday in hospital nearly two weeks later.
The army publishes the names and photographs of potential recruits with a request to the public to say what they know about these men. It would seem that the public remained silent or simply did not know enough about the potential recruits.
It is the same with the police. Many join the Guyana Police Force, get trained, and then become rogue cops. There is no way we can determine who would go rogue having joined the law enforcement team. This is the case all over the world. However, in some countries there are teams that actually spy on serving policemen. That is not the case in Guyana.
There are policemen who set up illegal roadblocks and fleece motorists. There is the belief that some of them actually robbed people travelling from the airport. But what seems clear is that there are more good law enforcers than bad ones, but their job is made double hard because they are often lumped with the corrupt.
Policemen renting guns to criminals may not be a thing of the past, but with renewed community vigilance and a serious move by the police to catch the corrupt in their midst, one can see a drop in crime.
Recently one of them who actually became a taxi driver was shot dead and his accomplice, a common theif, got a lengthy jail term. But there are others out there driving around and looking for targets. Because of this I reinforce my call for the country to go plastic sooner rather than later.
LISTEN HOW JAGDEO WILL MAKE ALL GUYANESE RICH!!!
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