Minister Benn, the police and the public

Some important issues that have to do with service delivery in the law and order sector arise out of Home Affairs Minister Robeson Benn’s recent pronouncement regarding physical attacks on members of the Guyana Police Force by civilians including his entirely justifiable insistence that such attacks cease. Men and women who are charged with law enforcement responsibilities should feel at liberty to properly execute those without feeling a sense of menace or apprehension in the pursuit of their undertaking to protect and serve.

The Minister’s comment, incidentally, comes in the wake of what, reportedly, was a physical attack on a policeman by a Guyana Defence Force rank while the former was executing his lawful duties.

The first thing that should be said about the Minister’s pronouncement is that - as presented in another section of the media - it may have been denied a certain important contextual dimension. It is important that this be addressed. Before doing so it is apposite to note that the relatively recent history of relations between the police and the public has been characterized by challenges arising out of what, in many instances have been indiscretions on the part of the Force in the execution of its duties. That is a truth that we, including the Minister, must begin by accepting. Some of these indiscretions have derived from what the Force says are the challenges associated with contemporary crime-fighting. That being said, instances of excessive and outright extrajudicial resort by members of the Force are no figment of the public’s or our imagination.

Minister Benn has only just been appointed to the position though it is altogether reasonable to assume that as much as any other informed Guyanese, he would have become familiar with at least some of the fault lines of the Force, not least the considerable element of public resentment that derives from what is perhaps best described as some unwholesome elements of policing practice. He may be Minister of Home Affairs now but surely he cannot pretend to be unaware of the bumps and bruises of Force.

For this reason it is a matter of the utmost importance that what the Minister describes as policemen and policewomen’s right to take “reasonable precautions to protect themselves” benefit from careful and deliberate clarification, the most important issue here being particular clarification on what, from one instance to another, constitutes “reasonable precautions.” Why? Because ill-defined boundaries to the prerogative of retaliation by policemen and women who come under attack from members of the public run the risk of unacceptable and unlawful police excesses, shortcomings which, it is now common public

knowledge, have been manifestly extant in the policing modus operandi in Guyana.

Over time, we have heard, with monotonous regularity, stories of attempted arrests of individuals leading to serious injury or death of the ‘suspect’ arising out of altogether unconvincing accounts of a single individual attempting to fend off a few ablebodied and armed policemen. Invariably, nothing has come of these incidents.

It is precisely for this reason that the retaliatory prerogative of policemen and women who come under hostile attack should not be confused with altogether disproportionate responses that lead to the victims being seriously ‘roughed up’ at the one extreme or seriously injured or killed at the other.

Minister Benn, having pronounced on the right of the police to defend themselves against attacks that occur in the course of the execution of their duties now has a responsibility to make clear to both the police and the public the parameters within which that prerogative should be confined. Frankly, it will do the already seriously fractured image of the GPF further damage if the Minister’s assertion of the right of the police to protect/defend themselves results in a surfeit of cases stretching the police’s prerogative of self-defence to the point where we have to deal with injured and maimed persons and ill- conceived police justifications for manifest excesses. The careful documenting and dissemination of the paradigms of the police prerogative should be attended by specifically spelt out penalties in instances where policemen have acted outside the

confines of their prerogative. Here, effective implementation turns on the transparency of the manner in which these cases are treated and here as well, the Minister has a clear and unmistakable responsibility if he is seriously concerned with the image of the Force.

In much the same way that the Minister is doubling down – and he has a right to do so – on the importance of the police not having to fend off attacks by members of the public, one assumes that policemen and women are being tutored in the discipline of properly assessing threat levels and making decisions on the scales of their responses.

Setting aside what continues to be a serious shortage of manpower, which circumstances, if not remedied, will result in the GPF being continually weighed and found wanting, there is also the matter of the public image of the police which has been in the proverbial dog house for some time now. Improving police/public relations is one of those vehicles through which more effective policing can be realized. This can be a useful starting point for Minister Benn.