Police seek to improve response time to crime — says Top Cop
Commissioner of Police Seelall Persaud during his address
Commissioner of Police Seelall Persaud during his address

CONTROLLING the level of unprofessional behaviour, reducing response time and cybercrime investigations are amongst the concerns to be addressed at the 2018 Annual Police Officers’ Conference.

This was disclosed by Police Commissioner Seelall Persaud during his farewell address at the Conference which commenced Thursday at the Officer’s Mess, Eve Leary, Georgetown.
He said there will be a review of the system of police prosecutions, since the Force has found over the years a number of negative issues associated with those.
“So it is anticipated that there will be intense discussions, regarding the development of systems for commanders in order to achieve that control function of management,” he said.

Adding that the previous year brought its own challenges to the Guyana Police Force (GPF), the top cop said the Force has demonstrated its resilience at the end of the year, since serious crime statistics show a decrease of 10 per cent, relative to the previous year.
“I know that from time to time these statistics are questioned, but I wish to say they are reported statistics and that there are always a number of crimes that are unreported; those are referred to as the dark figure of crime and it is not reflected in our statistics of reported crimes,” the commissioner said.

He explained that for several reasons, people choose not to report certain crimes, such as persons who sell or buy narcotics and consume narcotics.
“They are participating in those crimes, in addition there are other reasons why people don’t report crimes, some measure the utility they will gain from justice against the time they would have to spend in order to achieve that justice,” Persaud said “And this will determine whether they will report or not. Public trust is a major issue. [If] people don’t believe that the matter will be treated professionally, and a justified outcome [reached], then they will not be motivated to report it.”

Further, he said when compared to the last two years, the GPF had a 19 per cent decrease in reports and during 2017, the Force ‘clear up’ rates for reported murders stood at 77 per cent.
He said that while there are doubts in the statistics, in countries like Guyana with a small population, it is extremely difficult to hide murders.
“Murders get reported, people report when their friends, family, relatives, neighbour, whatever go missing and on that incident we are not tolerant to persons killing other persons unlawfully in Guyana; our society is not tolerant to that so it gets reported,” he said.

Regarding capacity throughout the year 2017, the commissioner of police said the Force recruited, trained and deployed 471 new recruits; 572 ranks benefitted from in-service and overseas training and this include training conducted by the Justice Education Society under funding from the US Embassy.
Meanwhile, he said that the 140 vehicles donated via a grant from the Chinese government and the 170 bicycles along with training of bicycle patrol received from the US Government will aid in crime prevention.

“This is likely to have a great impact on crime prevention, crime detection and traffic control and response time. In addition, we have provided security for various local, regional and international events, including the CARICOM Heads of Government meeting which was held in February 2017 here in Guyana,” he said.
He also said many reviews of performances over the previous year in addition to plans, are presented and finalized. As such it is anticipated that there will be intense discussions regarding the development of systems for commanders in order to achieve that control function of management.
“This happens to be my final conference; I am and will be proceeding on pre-retirement leave in a couple of weeks. I have had a wonderful journey, but I do look forward in entering the next phase of my life, I have nothing but the best wishes for the GPF and for Guyana,” Persaud said in his closing remarks.

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