President nudges Police towards strong intelligence-driven approach
PRESIDENT Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday pledged that his Government will continue to focus on providing greater tools to the Guyana Police Force (GPF) but said the approach of the latter has to be one strongly driven by intelligence.
The Head of State was delivering the feature address at the opening of the  GPF Annual Officers’ Conference at Police Officers’ Mess, Eve Leary, Georgetown, under the theme ‘Providing Effective Security through Improved Police-Community relations’.
Happy to be there, once again, to participate in what has become a very important direction forming conference, he told the gathering it is not wise, every year, to change policy directions.
Instead President Jagdeo reinforced some of the things that he mentioned in the past.
He told the gathering: “You yourselves have, through hard work, come up with a very focused approach on the challenges facing law enforcement in Guyana; approach to dealing with these challenges within our national context and, I think, you have answered the key question that has been posed now at the international level at many conferences.
“That is the future role of law enforcement and what should it focus on, given the evolution of policing and its current form. Whether you should be people of peace, anti-terrorist specialists, or community outreach agents.”
However, he said: “I think, given the thematic approaches that you have settled on, you have resolved, among yourselves, that is, at officers’ level, that your focus in meeting the challenges of Guyana would have to be a combination of all three.”
President Jagdeo said, whilst there may be a dominant trend or a dominant direction, careful attention has to be paid to all of these tendencies.
“I have always insisted (and), just recently, I spoke with officers of our Army, that people who are in law enforcement agencies and the disciplined forces need, in this changing world, to understand national public policy; they need to understand how they contribute to national public policy and how they also benefit from national public policy,” he said.
According to him, the time is long gone when people were required to stick rigidly within the confines of their particular specialisation.
“You cannot function effectively in the modern world unless you reach those barriers – the barriers of your profession, so that you can take what you do in a very important context,” he remarked.
Thinking capacity
President Jagdeo said this helps people to develop thinking capacity and thinking officers who are equipped with the tools mentally as well as physically are needed, to address the many challenging situations that they would, inevitably, face.
Alluding to the global economic and financial situation and the great deal of uncertainties, he said the country has managed to record positive growth and has just presented the 2010 National Budget, the biggest ever in its history.
The Head of State said “as we remain optimistic about the future, persons must, constantly, be cognisant of the challenges that face us globally, because they are strongly correlated to our well-being.
“And we must never become complacent and this is a challenge for policy makers that is not easy,” he agreed.
President Jagdeo insisted that a much deeper understanding of the these challenges is required.
“So I urge you to understand this, nevertheless, in spite of these challenges, our budget for the Police has increased by over a billion dollars this year over last year’s.”
He took the opportunity to thank the officers and the leadership of the GPF for the work done, observing that, many times, people do not recognise it.
“We live in a society that often focuses just on negatives and we don’t appreciate hard work. We don’t appreciate good things about ourselves and there are good things that are happening here in this country,” the President maintained.
He said there are good things being done by ordinary people and by many sectors that provide services to the people.
“…we are not complacent by pointing out successes. It doesn’t mean that we are going to become complacent but it is important that people know that, with less resources, because you have less resources than many of your counterparts in the Caribbean, you have done a better job than most of them.”
President Jagdeo said there are going to be instances of difficulties in the GPF and people who do not act in accordance with the high standards expected of the institution, the authority needs to “come down hard on them” because the image of the Force is more important than the image of a single individual.
“We agreed that whatever the strategy direction will be there is one thing that has to change.
“Last year, we spoke about this, I spoke about this, again, at the level of the Army that, whatever we do in crime fighting, we have to change the approach and the approach has to be one strongly driven, in fact, primarily driven by intelligence,” he reiterated.
President Jagdeo said the entire world has taken this direction and the most effective Police forces around the world are the ones that are led by intelligence.
He said, in countries that some of the people use as models, the law enforcement agencies have all the tools required to pursue their jobs, particularly, the legislative and organisational tools.
President Jagdeo said those countries have multiple intelligence gathering agencies while Guyana does not have all of those resources.
Multiple purposes
“…so we have to tailor our intelligence gathering in a fashion where it serves multiple purposes but, more importantly, where we don’t have too much duplication. We cannot afford duplication, we are just too small,” he declared.
President Jagdeo said an intelligence agency is being created locally that will support the Police, particularly, in their fight against crime, which is normal.
“If you agree to have an intelligence led law enforcement effort or to shift the focus on intelligence led – you have to get the tools – legislative and institutional tools,” he noted.
Against this backdrop, the President refuted claims in a daily newspaper report in which the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) expressed concerns over the move to set up a Central Intelligence Agency.
He said: “I opened the papers today and I see a defunct political party, WPA – I don’t know if it exists anymore – saying that we are creating an intelligence agency to spy on citizens and political opponents.”
But President Jagdeo denied it is an agency to spy on people, stating the Administration wants to make sure it has the best operatives in the agencies and will be able to garner intelligence, particularly electronic intelligence, using high tech surveillance methods with the placing of cameras on the landscape.
“…the United Kingdom, minutes after the terrorist incidents, could show you images of the people who committed it and it is not seen as a violation of civil rights in the UK,” he pointed out.
President Jagdeo said the Police will not only be able to solve crime but also to prevent it.
“We don’t have any desire to spy on political opponents or ordinary citizens and the tools that we are giv
ing to you now are tools that developed law enforcement agencies around the world already have,” he reminded.
“This year, we will continue to focus on giving you greater tools,” he assured, noting that the Anti-Money Laundering Act was just passed.
He said some other efforts include putting in place time limit for judicial decision making, which will, hopefully, help to reduce some of the backlogs in courts and plans to pass legislation on cyber crime because it is very important to start looking at the Internet which could be used as a means of committing a series of criminal acts.
President Jagdeo said Government plans to conduct more training of Police Prosecutors and work closer with the Chambers of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) while improving the governance sector by operationalising the Sectoral Committee on Disciplined Forces.
He said there will be stricter licensing of firearms and penalties for criminals using them; the strengthening of the physical capacity with an aggressive civil works programme to improve buildings, as well, as the deployment of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) related services, including with the fibre optic cable that Government will be bringing.
President Jagdeo emphasised that the GPF has to be much more accountable and has already started moving in that direction, using standardised forms at the divisional level.
He said, although there have been some successes against the bigger drug dealers, he still has not seen enough effort by the Police to tackle the drug houses in the communities.
The President challenged the GPF to go after them aggressively as narcotics create a spinoff for a whole series of petty crimes.
He said the Administration is increasing the amount of money given to the Salvation Army and supports it to expand its programmes which provide help to persons who want to change.
President Jagdeo gave the assurance that the GPF has the full backing of his Government.
“I don’t think we have had any time in our history such a strong legislative agenda to give you the tools that you need to be more effective,” he said, stating that the Government recognises the important role that the GPF plays in the society and encouraging the officers to continue their hard work.