-Minister Rohee urges West Coast Berbice CPGs
RECOGNISING that community policing plays an important role in Government’s overall crime fighting strategy, Minister of Home Affairs Mr. Clement Rohee, on Friday last, met with members of Community Policing Groups (CPGs) on the West Coast of Berbice to address issues that are affecting their operations.
Among the issues that were raised include misuse of CPG vehicles, non-cooperation among members, personality clashes, and ineffective administration.
Minister Rohee reminded that Guyana is one of the few countries in the Caribbean that has such active CPGs and its value is fully recognised by the Administration as well as Guyanese.
“If Government did not recognise the importance of community policing, it would not have been spending millions every year to ensure the effective functioning of this body and these kinds of complaints are very disappointing,” he lamented.
He emphasised that no one would benefit from this kind of “internal squabbling” except criminals. Pointing out that nothing is wrong with community policing as a system, as the problem lies with the members,  Rohee declared: “The weakest factor in the security sector is the human factor.”
With regards to the misuse of CPG vehicles, Rohee said  his ministry has established Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to ensure vehicles are used properly by CPG members.
He said that community policing must be a disciplined organisation and people would have to face sanctions when rules are disobeyed.
“Once confidence in CPGs is lost, it is very difficult to earn it back so the structures have to work and the individual disagreements have to be sunk in favour of the wider interest, which is that of the community,” Minister Rohee said.
The Minister called on the members of the divisional executive to work towards ensuring effective operations of the groups.
The concept of CPGs in Guyana originates from the need to better relations between communities and the members of the Guyana Police Force. Government has taken a policy position to encourage and support the formation of these groups to work in tandem with and give support to the GPF.
This system grew out of the ‘Vigilante System’ whereby community members without any formal training in the maintenance of law and order, employed unlawful methods to secure their communities.
This year, the community policing system, which is given an annual budgetary allocation of over $15M, will be celebrating 35 years of existence.
The Government Information Agency reported that, at present, there are 280 CPGs across the country with a membership of approximately 4,750, which is more than the current establishment of the GPF.