– Police Commissioner Greene
THE Guyana Police Force (GPF), on Wednesday, credited plea bargaining legislation and beefed-up intelligence gathering with the break-up of a gang of heavily armed men, believed to have been responsible for murdering former Agriculture Minister Satyadeow ‘Sash’ Sawh and 23 people in two separate massacres. Addressing an annual awards ceremony at the Police Officers’ Mess Annexe, Eve Leary, Georgetown, Police Commissioner Henry Greene said the law, passed in 2008, was in keeping with a decision by Caribbean Police and Military chiefs.
He said it helped prosecute several members of the gang that was led by Rondell ‘Fine Man’ Rawlins, who was killed in August 2008, prior to the enactment of the statute in October of that year.
“If it wasn’t for an amendment to the Act, we could not have had the ‘Fine Man’ gang where they are today – behind the bars, We are using the plea bargain legislation effectively,” Greene told the gathering.
A Caribbean trained lawyer and career policeman, he noted that, in the absence of the legislation, gang members would not have given evidence against Rawlins.
“The effectiveness of the legislation, combined with our intelligence that we have been using and working with, has worked and worked significantly for us,” Greene maintained.
The Rawlins led group was blamed for the murder of Sawh and two of his siblings in April, 2006; the Lusignan massacre on January 26, 2008 that left 11 people including five children dead and the massacre of 12 people, three policemen among them, on February 17, 2008, at Bartica.
According to the Police, several of the gangsters are, currently, giving evidence against each other, at preliminary inquiries (PIs) into indictable charges to determine whether they should face trials by judge and jury.
The first man to be sentenced through the plea bargain process was a manslaughter convict imprisoned for seven years, after initially being indicted for the capital offence.