Killing was justified
Acting Police Commissioner, David Ramnarine
Acting Police Commissioner, David Ramnarine

– Top cop says police acted lawfully against suspected bandits

Kwame Assanah

ACTING Commissioner of Police David Ramnarine said police ranks were justified in killing three suspected bandits on the Georgetown seawall last week, insisting, “You’re dammed if you do, and dammed if you don’t.”
Ramnatine also said one other suspect who reportedly escaped is known. “We have some information on him; we have a place, and if we don’t get to him from a law enforcement perspective quite early, I daresay here that the information suggests that there may be some form of retribution.”
Kwame Assanah, of Buxton, East Coast Demerara (ECD); Dextroy ‘Dutty’ Cordis of Grove, East Bank Demerara; and 57-year-old Errol ‘Dynamite’ Adams were shot dead last Thursday by law enforcement. Another suspect who had escaped on motorcycle is being sought.

Dismissing concerns that the trio was executed, Ramnarine told media operatives at Police Headquarters, Eve Leary, Georgetown, on Monday, “No police officer sets out to execute a citizen, based on training and capacity-building in recent years.”
Relatives of at least one of the men are up in arms against his killing, insisting that he was no criminal. Ramnarine, however, said specific details can be debated, but the evidence is there to prove that the men were part of a criminal enterprise.
“So, whatever specific actions they may have played on the day in question, the thing is, you cannot escape the point that they were part and parcel of an arrangement to commit a criminal act with some serious consequences,” Ramnarine asserted.
“My sources out there, a number of whom will have to remain unknown, indicated to us in a very definitive way that this criminal act would have occurred with the potential for deadly force to be used by the suspects,” Ramnarine said, adding:
“They had intended to use deadly force in the furtherance of that criminal act.”

HIGHLY TRAINED
Further, Ramnarine said officers are highly trained, some more than others and on the day in question there were officers with superior firearms training who collaborated with CID headquarters to ensure that the suspects were caught.
Adding that there were articles in the media that one of the suspects was a ‘churchgoer with a spotless record’, Ramnarine said, “but did we plant him with the other two who met their demise; did we put him there, no one has disputed he was there.” He said because of social media there are persons who are not careful of what language they use and give all manner of insinuations which add fuel to matters unnecessarily.
“The policemen acted in keeping with the law. They were fired upon and as with law enforcement officers who are authorised to use deadly force, as long as deadly force is justified to defend themselves … were those policemen who found themselves in that situation expendable? Come one, let’s be real, we have to applaud what happened,” he said.
Acknowledging that there may have been an error made in an initial police press release which stated that Kwame Assanah was charged before with a criminal offence, Ramnarine said based on information in police possession he was part of the criminal act that was perpetrated. “If the GPF had not taken that course of action a few days ago, a lot of collateral damage would have happened on Robb Street, based on the information we received and it is good that it ended up at the seawall in a more desolate location,” he said.
Adding that it is not the first occasion that persons upon leaving the bank ventured onto the seawalls and were robbed, the acting Top Cop said sting operations are increasingly needed as law enforcement officers seek to protect the public. He said that the curse of preventative policing is that you’re “dammed if you do and dammed if you don’t”.

SURVEILLANCE

Dextroy Cordis

The Acting Commissioner of Police said in the recent past there was a spate of car-jackings and based on law enforcement information, surveillance, intelligence gathering, public trust, public support, the Force managed to put a dent in a gang that was operating, creating havoc and mayhem in which people were shot and robbed of their vehicles.
He said that the GPF was thankful for the information since it was timely and accurate to the extent that preparatory work was done where there was intensified surveillance and a lot of support from the public and persons who were affected.
On Friday, Claire Assanah had vehemently denied that her husband had any previous criminal history, a claim which the police force, through Crime Chief Paul Williams, had corroborated in other sections of the media. The woman said she last spoke to her husband at around 11:47hrs on Thursday when the two discussed plans for him to pick up their children later in the day. She told the Guyana Chronicle that she never knew her husband to be involved in any criminal activity.
She said that the Toyota motorcar he was using is registered in both their names, and that her husband would work taxi from time to time. She believes that this may have led to his demise, as she and relatives believe that the man may have inadvertently been at the wrong place when the shooting occurred.
Assanah’s wife, who teaches at a city private school, noted that her husband was shot once in the right arm and again in the right rib cage.

SEEKING ANSWERS
She said that the family is seeking answers, as they find that the police’s story does not add up. The family plans to approach a lawyer in that regard.
Assanah’s wife said her husband was once a pilot-in-training, but later made a family-related decision to switch careers. The family operates a chicken farm, and only recently, the man started out at a new job as a debt collector – ventures which the woman said provided for the family’s welfare.
She said that seeing that her husband had to seek a Police Clearance for his new job the police would have been able to say if indeed he did have a criminal history in the process of obtaining the clearance.
As regards the passports which were found in the man’s car, the woman said her husband always carried around important documents with him as well as the passports of himself and the entire family. She could not say how the police managed to find an additional five passports in the couple’s car.
“I know he would have pleaded for his life; he is not the type to confront,” the man’s wife noted, her voice breaking.
According to the police, following the shooting, a 9 mm pistol, along with a magazine containing seven live rounds and four spent shells were found next to Cordis’ body.

UNMARKED VEHICLE
The police, in their report, had stated that around 10:30hrs on Thursday, based on information received from ‘operatives’ on duty in the vicinity of Scotiabank on Robb Street, ranks of an anti-crime patrol in an unmarked vehicle began trailing a motorcar with two suspicious-looking characters in it, which was in the vicinity at the time.
The suspects were reportedly seen following a customer who had exited Scotiabank and driven off in a motorcar. According to the police, the customer, upon arriving at the Kingston Seawall, parked his motorcar. No sooner had he done so, the police say, than he was pounced upon by the suspects.
Cordis and Assanah, who were in the latter’s car, a Toyota IST bearing registration PTT 9034, were killed, the police say, following a confrontation with lawmen.
Adams, who was on a motorcycle, which, the police claimed, arrived at the scene after the initial shooting, died during a subsequent exchange of gunfire with lawmen in an unmarked police vehicle.

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