Grisly reminder of what Guyana has become
When you read the critical, acerbic, hair-raising response of the Director of Pubic Prosecution (DPP) to the botched investigation into some gruesome murders by the Guyana Police Force, then one conclusion comes immediately to mind – our country is not a viable, modern state. The level of outrage contained in the DPP’s statement should not surprise us. For a long time now, the Guyana Police Force has become dysfunctional. The brutal, savage murders of many homosexuals have just been contemptuously dismissed by the police. Eminent Guyanese have been killed and though robbery was not a motive, the cases are stored in old freezers buried deep in the cemetery of the dilapidated office of the Eve Leary and Brickdam offices of the police. Life has no value in this country and it is questionable whether this country can survive another twenty years. The police force and the people who control it have no apology to make to this nation for the contempt with which they treat the Guyanese people. Some of the most horrible criminal situations just go unattended in this land. The co-owner of Nabi and Sons, the famous architecture firm that did the Caricom Secretariat, was shot and killed on a work site in East La Penitence. He wasn’t robbed. His murder has become a footnote. The particular case that is extremely obscene over which the Police Commissioner at the time should have been dismissed peremptorily reads like a movie script. An ordinary driver stood to benefit handsomely from an heiress who wanted to pay him back for his years of devoted service. There was a drive-by shooting directed at him but he survived. Any rookie policeman would tell you that family business is where the conspiracy originated. Yet to date there is no investigation. Did the wealthy family pay Henry Greene off? My answer is yes. Not only Greene but many of the seniors in the force take money. This writer knows that none of the close family members of the heiress was questioned. This is the same police force that is quick to pulverize teenage males that they pick up for loitering. This is the same police that would brutalize young men for stealing mangoes from a private yard. This columnist and three other members of the People’s Parliament went to pay a visit to the relatives in Leopold Street of a murdered homosexual. This young man was brutally slaughtered. Do you know the police did not take possession of his cell phone? This is a basic method of modern police investigation. This columnist believes that a highly placed individual has killed his homosexual lovers and he will kill again because he knows the police do not serve this nation, do not intend to do professional policing and that Guyana has gone to the dogs. So he knows he will kill again and walk free. Back to the DPP’s shocking revelations. She tells the Guyanese people that the files of many murder investigations are sent to her office three years later. She tells us a botched investigation into the deaths of a Cuban doctor and his female partner led the police to conclude it was murder-suicide when an examination of the autopsy report leads to double homicide. But why is the DPP shocked at this? Inside the police force, homicides occur and the police couldn’t be bothered. In Berbice, the police came up with a theory of murder-suicide when it was alleged that a superintendent shot a lower rank then put two bullets into his own brain. The post-mortem result revealed that the senior officer could not have fired two bullets because the first would have killed him. If you blow your temple off with the first round, from where are you going to get the muscular movement in your hand to take a second shot? It is so sad that the relatives of these victims cannot get closure. But when citizens live in a failed state there can be no answers for anything because nothing makes sense in a failed state. If you follow the history of Nazi Germany the way I have as a trained historian then you would conclude that such a dent in civilization cannot happen again. But it will because selfish people will always support an Adolph Hitler for their own financial gain. The DPP’s response to police incompetence will not move the Private Sector Commission to condemn the 20-year-old government we have in Guyana as incompetent too. No they think only of their profits. Death comes so easily in Guyana, a land that time forgot long ago.
