PROMPT decisive police work would solve many a seemingly unsolvable crime. This writer is of that view and I challenge anyone to prove me wrong. The point cannot be overemphasised that slothful and negligent behaviour on the part of the force, see many crimes going unpunished.

The police as it were are the ones who ought to stand guard, ready to get the lawbreaker before he seizes the opportunity to do wrong. He is the watchdog (for want of a better word) of society willing and able to get the wrongdoer whose motto by the way is “do the crime and evade the consequences at all cost.”
It is the criminal’s mantra to commit crimes and get away with it. His duty is to do the crime, create havoc in society with his nefarous activities while at the same time make a mockery of the law. In time, he earns the onerous reputation of being a “good bandit” one who society fears and the police can’t touch. ‘Skinny’ and ‘Fineman’ were prime examples of such individuals.

Now, there are ways to upset that whole scheme of things and it all comes from what I’ve alluded to in the opening paragraph – prompt sleuth-like operations that would leave the criminals flat footed and totally bereft of hiding and excuses. In the present scheme of things the police wait for a crime to be committed then go in a mad rush to get the perpetrator. It smacks at nothing short of a travesty of justice and a waste of time. The criminal of today is too good a planner and is more sophisticated, and is not going to stop and wait for the police to come to get him. You (the police) must go and get him (the criminal).
In this regard, the police ought to go out there and get the criminal, take the crime fight to them.
I speak not of the well scheduled operations like those done at Houston – where the criminal knows the drill and easily evades the cordon. I am speaking of going to the criminals’ hideaway and get him and firearms, nipping it in the bud, before the inevitable happens.
Guyana is too small a place – I mean the criminal landscape – for them to have the upper hand.
Those who are in law enforcement should have a planned initiative to get these guns off our streets. And those guns I refer to are “legal” and illegal firearms. Once these firearms are out of criminal use that criminal or would-be criminal cannot make trouble. You would’ve also noted that I used “legal” in lifted commas and this is to press home the peculiar point that the so called legal guns are in the hands of the wrong individuals which make for a worst case scenario. More and more cases of “legal” gun use are surfacing when those “legal arms” were used for matters not what they were intended. This is the lawlessness that exists in our country right now.
Then, there must be a separation of those who are hell bent on breaking the law from those who want to live by it.
This is the way forward for Guyana, failing which we will continue to experience the doom and gloom that presently envelopes society.