THE Minister of Public Security has (reportedly) taken all vehicles from Community Policing Groups (CPGs) across the country, and has given them to the Guyana Police Force. 

The Government’s reason for doing that is to equip the Police Force with more resources to reduce crime in Guyana.
Community policing had always been a policy for the PPP Government; community policing helps to prevent crime, builds social capital and leadership in the community.
According to criminologist David Garland, “This network of partnership arrangements and inter-agency working agreements is designed to foster crime prevention and enhance community safety primarily through the cultivation of the community involvement and the dissemination of crime- prevention ideas and practice.”
Community policing, as a policy, helps to fight crime beyond the traditional police-driven agenda for crime prevention.
Community policing has been associated with more apparitional claims to both generate greater participation, and possibly leadership, from all the sections of the community in crime prevention, and in targeting social harms from sources other than just those classifiable as “Crimes.”
Community policing across Guyana has encouraged ‘Communitarian’ and ‘social capital’’ oriented ambition of replacing fearful, insecure communities with ‘responsibilised’ safe and secure ones.
The Government of Guyana needs to implement policies to support more active community policing, rather than disable them.

SARA KHAN