The SOCU ‘scam’

The incident in which two policemen were, earlier this month, reportedly caught up in a scam during which they pretended to be attached to the Force’s Special Organized Crimes Unit (SOCU) and used their cover as a vehicle with which to perpetrate a shocking, bare-faced and seemingly ill thought-out rip-off is part of a familiar pattern of seriously deviant behaviour by some Police Officers. These now make no secret of the fact that their motive has everything to do with usurping the cover of the uniform to bring in personal material gain beyond their legitimate emoluments.

The wider law-enforcement framework, including the high command of the Force and the political machinery headed by the Minister of Home Affairs appear, on the basis of the available evidence to be either blissfully unaware of, or altogether indifferent to the reality that functionaries whose duty it is to uphold the law have, in this instance, not only abdicated that responsibility, but have, as well, defected to the realm of substantive crime. Indeed, at that level and on the basis of the overall posture of the political directorate there still appears not to be a posture of throwing down some sort of official gauntlet, including a disposition that signals a readiness to impose harsh sanctions comparable to the magnitude of the transgression.

The wider indifference of police officers to adherence to their substantive law-enforcement responsibilities is not a circumstance with which Guyana is, in the least, unfamiliar. That said, when two policemen can descend to the level of pretending to be SOCU functionaries in their pursuit of what appears to be an attempt at a basic criminal rip-off, there is need to view the situation altogether differently. Up to this time there is no evidence that the extent of the official response reflects an understanding of the insidious nature of the crime.

Taking advantage of a delinquent traffic offender in pursuit of what we in Guyana describe as ‘a raise’ is a practice with which every Guyanese who is sound of mind is familiar. Indifference to the practice has caused it to descend to the level of a ‘non offence.’ On the other hand, for uniformed policemen who are altogether unconnected to the Force’s Special Organized Crimes Unit to go around ‘scamming’ people for personal gain, is a challenge of an altogether different magnitude to law enforcement and an ugly stain on the Force itself. It casts an eerie shadow across the wider fabric of policing, causing even more searching questions to be raised about the integrity of an institution that has responsibility for keeping us safe in ways that go beyond responding to run

of-the-mill and serious infractions that repose in the common criminal realm. Indeed, it would hardly be an overstatement to assert that the work of SOCU can – and perhaps even does – frequently take the Unit down the road of national security considerations.

Even taking into account the fact that effective policing, frequently, requires that there be constraints to information sharing and that the placing of sensitive information in the public domain can sometimes be risky, one gets the distinct impression that those considerations are sometimes pressed into service by both the political and administrative mechanisms that govern the operations of the GPF to withhold information from the public domain in circumstances where it is manifestly not in the public interest to do so. Indeed, there is a considerable body of public opinion that what is proffered as discretion in either the complete withholding or the vigorous ‘massaging’ of information prior to release for public consumption, is not a habit that can honestly be deemed to be in the public interest. It is about the insidious plastering over of sores that warrants substantive remedial treatment.

This is a dangerous practice for the simple reason that it removes from both the political and professional functionaries the burden of accountability, a circumstance that creates room for the continual decline of the public image of the country’s Law and Order citadel.

Nor would it be an exaggeration to cite both the seemingly ‘relaxed’ posture of the Minister of Home

Affairs, in circumstances where reflective and incisive comment designed to enlighten becomes necessary, or the infuriating complete evasiveness of the current Commissioner of Police in matters that have to do with serious transgressions that occur in the GPF’s operational realm.

Two issues arise here. The first – in instances like the recent attempted SOCU ‘shakedown,’ – has to do with the likely danger that such an act can seriously impair the efficiency and effectiveness of one of the Force’s most important crime-fighting units. The second has to do with the damage that the GPF appears to be accumulating to its image and by extension, to its effectiveness. This is occurring at a time when we need a Police Force than can be suitably responsive to the social, economic and image transformations that the country is undergoing at this time and the need, in those circumstances, for law enforcement to play its role in ensuring that the country secures and retains that image.

At this juncture both the professional as well as the political functionaries that ‘call the shots’ as far as the operating image of the Force is concerned need to get their act together…in a hurry.