–  President Jagdeo tells Officers  at Police Conference
PRESIDENT Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday urged Officers of the Guyana Police Force not to let foreign countries use them as extensions of drug fighting efforts, which may be more in the interest of those countries than the developing countries. He was speaking at the opening of the annual Police Officers’ Conference at the Police Officers’ Mess, Eve Leary, Georgetown. The conference will end tomorrow.
“Do not allow the Police Force to become the drug fighting capability of another power. We must fight drug dealers ferociously because it affects us here in Guyana. We must fight drug dealers because they bring in guns along with the drugs…drugs don’t go by themselves, they go along with guns and guns wreak havoc in our society,” the President said.
“We must fight them because they destroy the future of our young people, but we must not fight them because another country wants this. Equally, with fighting the drug dealers, we must also maintain law and order in our streets and safety on our roads. Some countries want to turn our entire Police Force into their drug fighting efforts abroad, and we must resist that temptation, and there is very little help for that,” he said. The President added that the money made available from overseas to fight drugs could not pay the staff of Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU) for a month.
“We should collaborate to fight drugs because it is transnational, and the best way to fight it is through transnational sharing of information and strategies; but we must not live for that, or we will be, by extension, solving other people’s problems to the neglect of our own,” he said.
Commenting on a recent presentation by a Jamaican Rear Admiral who spoke on the causes of crime and what Government’s response should be, the President called the presentation by that person “stupid and anecdotal.”
He added that while some crime is related to economic circumstances, others, like the violent killings by the various gangs over the years, could not justifiably fit into this category. He said that while some crime will be met with softer strategies, the heavy firepower would be reserved for others.