I AM very disappointed with Stabroek News Editorial which was published on Monday, February 23, 2009, and captioned, “The cold, cold truth”. They seem to want to suggest that the PPP/C Government had failed to provide the required resources to the police resulting in the number of high profile cases being unsolved.

It is unfortunate that the Stabroek News should try to deceive its readers to make it appear that the United States solves all its murders because it has invested in its police, while Guyana is unable to do so. The editor has used the recent report of an arrest of a suspect in the intern Chandra Levy, as criteria to judge the success rate of solving crimes.

What the editor failed to mention is that the investigation was so botched in the early stages that it led to the destruction of the career of an individual who had insisted that he was innocent and is now exonerated.

Secondly, the editor failed to acknowledge the state of the Guyana Police Force and most other State institutions when the PPP/C Government took Office in 1992.

Any institution that was exposed to the level of mismanagement as the Guyana Police Force was under the PNC Government would take some time and radical changes to return to the required professionalism.

Institutions like the Police Force take time to shed its unwanted members. The PPP/C government, over the years has provided resources and opportunities for the force to return to the required level of professionalism. That investment has begun to bear fruit!

Thirdly, the USA policy to deport criminals who were not born in the USA to their home of origin caused the entire Caribbean Region to be threatened by rising violent high tech organised crime, which its police were incapable of handling. Guyana is one of the few countries in the Region that has regained control of the situation.

The editor also failed to mention the part played by the opposition in disrupting the police from conducting investigation into many crimes. They on many occasions intimidated witnesses and dissuaded them from coming forward with information to assist.

To compare the Burnham era with the Jagdeo era is unfair and dishonest. Persons can join the police without the requirement of a party card. Heads of the Disciplined Services are no longer required to pledge allegiance to the ruling party. And the freedom that the very Stabroek News now exercises to unfairly criticise the police was definitely not there.

The recent success at Bartica has followed the successes last year. It is indeed very sad that the Stabroek News would choose to criticise the police when everyone should be congratulating them. It makes one wonder if there is some desire on the part of this newspaper to demoralise the police.

And just for information to readers of the true state of unsolved murders in the USA and to provide them with a more balanced perspective the following was taken from ‘ask.yahoo.com’:

“Given the wealth of forensic information, you’d think police would solve each and every murder. Unfortunately, you’d be wrong. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in 2004, 62.6 percent of homicides were “cleared,” leaving a substantial portion (37.4 percent) of murder cases unresolved.

The FBI’s official site says a crime is cleared when either an arrest is made or “elements beyond the control of law enforcement prevent the agency from arresting and formally charging the offender, by exceptional means.” We assume this refers to rare cases when, for example, suspects die before they can be charged.

In 2004, there were 16,137 cases of murder or non-negligent manslaughter in the United States. Because 37.4 percent of these cases went uncleared, around 6,035 people “got away with murder” that year. Of course, this assumes each offender murdered only one person, which very likely isn’t true, but seeing as the cases are unsolved, this is our best guess. Anyway, while that number is disturbingly high.”
T. MORGAN