I WAS in a conversation with a friend the other day on some ‘hot button’ issues, the police being the main topic.  At the time of our animated debate the following article surfaced in one of the dailies: “Cops demand money from residents, arrested after trying to return cash”.  It was another  story involving the police for all the wrong reasons. As the story goes, the lawmen went to a house in Herstelling and made a successful drug bust. From all appearances, the felons there happened to make a deal with the cops, that is,  trade some cash or risk incarceration. Thus, the silly police conducting a routine habit of theirs in what we say in creole “trying to help out” fell right into the criminals’ trap. Those guys in turn reported the matter to higher authorities, who have since held the officers on house arrest.

The point I am making here is standard police behaviour, something that we all know – cops being bought for filthy lucre – something that has been going on for years. The idea of evading prosecution in exchange for cash is synonymous with the Guyana Police Force; let’s not fool ourselves.

When you speak of  The Force, the “cash factor” readily cashes in.  It is something that has bedevilled the force for eons of time but as I have hinted in previous letters, this might have worked successfully pre-1992, wherein those guys would have evaded jail time by “paying up”,  but in the new dispensation of things they want their money back as well as the cops prosecuted.

I could hear them shouting to the top of their lungs “corruption in the Force”, something they and their criminal associates gloat over. No doubt, these officers are going to lose their jobs and rightly so; an example has to be made of corrupt cops.
Failing  the test of carrying out your professional duties with the age-old trick of “trying to  help out”  is no excuse..