I AM reading with disgust about the crime situation in Guyana and how the police and army are incapable of finding a solution to the problem. I am calling on the President of Guyana and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces to make crime-fighting his number one priority. The police have failed us miserably; crime is tearing the country apart and many murders are unsolved. 

My idea is to set up an Office of Homeland Security to stem the crime wave in Guyana. Many people to whom I showed this plan have argued that I am trying to set up a parallel Police Force and these are the people who haven’t spent time in the military. Well, if I am trying to set up a parallel Police Force, that’s all well and good, because the one we have in Guyana is not working, and for the sake of argument, if this is a parallel Police Force then what is CANU, (Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit) and BASS (Berbice Anti-Smuggling Squad)?
Both these units were created by the previous Administration after they had won the elections in 1992.
What I am proposing is that the Office of Homeland Security must be a special unit just like CANU and BASS, but would comprise mostly ex-Presidential Guard members and others, and must be answerable only to the President as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. This unit would co-ordinate Community Policing Groups in Guyana, because these groups under the Police Commissioner is not working. Instead of engaging us Guyanese here and in the Diaspora with the security skills on how to arrest the crime situation in Guyana, former Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee went ahead and set up a Citizens Security Programme, which is barely functioning and is incapable of stopping crime in the country.

It is said that Indians are inferior for military training; so what about the Gurkhas? My son is now a corporal in the US Navy. I spent six years in the Presidential Guard as bodyguard for three presidents of Guyana. I was lately sent on a two-week course in aviation security for American Airlines and I am still in the security business.
This propaganda about Indians is being peddled around for a very long time and I am surprised to see how many people buy into this myth. When the PPP won the elections in 1992, bus-loads of young Indian boys came from as far away as Berbice and Essequibo to join the Presidential Guard and the Guyana Police Force, but most were sent back to their respective communities by the then Minister of Home Affairs, Feroze Mohamed.
Mr. Mohamed also disbanded a good movement that was set up to protect the President and ministers at that time. We don’t need Scotland Yard or the FBI to tell us who is doing what in Guyana. The Guyanese people know. The information is out there. I can walk into any village and ask for ‘Jim Jones’ and a little child can show me where Jim Jones lives and tell me what he does, but the police can’t do this because the Guyanese people have lost confidence in them.
They see the police as bribe-takers, corrupt and torturers, that’s why they are afraid to come forward with the relevant information to the police.
Homeland Security would win the hearts and minds of the Guyanese people and our officers would be posted at all police stations across the country. I will post fliers in all parts of the country with telephone numbers to contact the Office of Homeland Security, so if someone sees something, they can say something.
This unit would also free up the police to look into other aspects of crime. I would create an intelligence network where selected men would be sent to India for training with the CBI (Criminal Bureau of Investigation). Why CBI? Because they are trained by the Israeli Mossad, the best in the world.
Guyana and India have a joint friendship through the ITEC programme, where I think the Indian government gives 42 free scholarships to Guyanese yearly, for training in different fields and this is where members of the Office of Homeland Security can benefit. So let’s get this ball rolling and put this plan into action now, so we can have a crime-free Guyana.

SURUJNARINE HARALD
(former bodyguard for three consecutive Presidents of Guyana)