Latest update April 17th, 2024 12:59 AM
Feb 12, 2015 News
By Michael Jordan
The Guyana Police Force is likely to face further questions about the quality of ranks it posts to the interior, following the exposure of an alleged extortion racket involving ranks stationed at Kurupung.
The Office for Professional Responsibility (OPR) is said to be on the verge of completing an investigation into reports that six ranks from the Kurupung Police Station demanded $600,000 from some Belgian mining firm employees following a drug raid.
The complaint was made in late January and the ranks, including a Lance Corporal, were placed under close arrest. At present, they are reportedly under open arrest at the Tactical Services Unit (TSU) in Eve Leary.
An official told Kaieteur News that the OPR has gone a “very far” way in its investigation and a report will be sent shortly to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).
According to reports, the ranks found a quantity of marijuana while searching an area that is connected with the Belgian firm. Rather than having the individuals charged, the policemen allegedly demanded $600,000 from staffers to cover up the matter. A complaint was made to senior police officials and the ranks were posted to Georgetown.
Whether it’s true that rouge cops are posted to the interior as a Force policy, it appears that the Kurupung Police Station is breeding its fair share.
It was just last month that the OPR received reports that two police ranks from the same location were involved in a corrupt transaction; to release a group of men who were found with an unlicensed shotgun and ammunition.
That incident allegedly occurred on January 12, 2015, following the men’s arrest.
This latest incident is likely to intensify a rancorous exchange between President of the Guyana Women Miners’ Organisation (GWMO) Simona Broomes and the Guyana Police Force over the quality of ranks that are sent to far-flung locations.
That exchange began last Monday when Broomes, a noted advocate against human trafficking, accused the Force of adopting a lax approach to Trafficking In Persons (TIP), via its alleged history of sending policemen who “misbehaved under supervision” to the interior “where there is no supervision.”
This elicited a sharp response from the Force’s Public Relations Department, which accused Broomes of appealing for resources “by using the distasteful strategy of telling lies on the Guyana Police Force.”
“It is totally untrue that most police ranks operating in remote locations are those that have been involved in something or the other, that is not in keeping with the lawful expectations of a cop,” it stated.
The police said that the Force transfers badly behaved‘ cops to locations where they could be properly supervised, and therefore, during 2014, no such person was transferred to remote areas.
Standing by her statements to the press, Broomes related several recent complaints that had come to her against police ranks, particularly in Mahdia.
She said that last week, GWMO members returned from Mahdia where several complaints were made against the police. Another rank was named as orchestrating abuses meted out to women and girls.
Broomes pointed to the fact that Guyana witnessed the conviction of a police officer for human trafficking and said that another is before the court for having sex with an underage girl.
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