— Top Cop tells Mosquito Hall residents

ACTING Commissioner of Police Clifton Hicken, along with Commander of Regional Division 4 ‘C,’ Senior Superintendent Khali Pareshram, were at the forefront of a highly successful community engagement at Mosquito Hall, Mahaica, East Coast Demerara on Saturday.

The team led by the Top Cop was warmly welcomed by the scores of residents, many of whom were eagerly looking forward to the opportunity to highlight their myriad concerns and issues affecting them in the community.

Among the issues raised by the residents were drugs and alcohol use by school students, loud music/noise nuisance, drinking and disrespectful attitudes, especially by the young men in the area.

Hicken, who sat and listened attentively to the residents, addressed the numerous concerns raised and which were within the ambit of his direct scope of operations. The Top Cop, as a show of his commitment to helping the community, even ventured out of his realm of operations and reached out to Government Minister Deodat Indar, via a cellphone call to address issues such as the potholes-filled roads and the constant flooding of the community.

Minister Indar, who had no objection to Hicken’s request to be put on ‘speaker’ for the benefit of the residents hearing what he had to say, gave a status update on the various issues raised and the efforts being made to address them.

Taking a brief pause in the meeting, the acting Commissioner singled out several children who were present at the meeting to come forward in a group. He spoke directly to them as he encouraged them to take their education and be the best that they can be, while urging them to stay away from drugs.

“I want you to promise me from today there will be no more drug-smoking and if anybody encourages you to smoke drugs, tell them the commissioner said not to do that as it is wrong and it is not healthy,” Hicken pleaded with the youths whom he labelled as the ‘catalyst for change.’

ON-THE-SPOT DECISIONS
As he continued the meeting, the Top Cop took several on-the-spot decisions, one of which is to form a Scouts Group in the community.

“Let me make this clear and I’m telling you now… we are going to bring Scouts to Mahaica. This means that the children will be a part of the Scouts Group and that’s a national activity. So starting from Saturday [next week], you are going to see the police coming in here in numbers and they are going to interact with the parents of the children,” the Top Cop said.
He said once the parents/guardians sign the Scouts Group consent form, he will get someone from the Scouts Association to visit the community to ensure that the children are provided with their scouts uniforms/kits and are ready to take part in the scouts’ movement/activity on weekends.

Commissioner Hicken went further, stating: “The scouts programme will entail the children moving from this community to Georgetown in a centralised way and they’re going to be exposed to other children from communities, so they can share ideas, they can share views and they can understand each other’s cultures. That itself will bring attitudinal changes to the community.”

In addressing the need for enhanced police presence in the community, Hicken highlighted that prevention is an important aspect of the force’s strategic plan, stating: “We are going to have police assigned to this community and we would like to have at least two or three pairs of police [officers] and they’re going to be walking this community as a prevention.”

He added: “We are going to be focusing heavily on crime prevention and so I took note of the need for an outpost to be here and as a Police Force that’s modernising and one that practises contemporary policing, we’re going to look at the possibility of you having that outpost in a short period.”

On conclusion of the engagement, several hampers were also distributed to the residents by Commissioner Hicken and his team.

Today’s initiative is not an isolated one, as it is an ongoing effort being led by the acting Commissioner himself, with tremendous support from his Executive Leadership Team (ELT) and the ‘Corporate Sector,’ and is in keeping with the force’s five-point strategic plan, one of which focuses heavily on building partnerships with communities and civil society to create safer environments countrywide.

Residents who turned out were very vocal in their commendation of the GPF for its committed efforts to fight crime and to foster a better relationship with the community.
(Report/photos by CCU’s Avindra Rajballi and Troy Vanrossum)