\u2026and retribution
\nYour Eyewitness was one of those who called for a more proactive response by the Police to the crime tsunami sweeping the country in general, and Berbice in particular. With the overwhelming majority of the crimes being committed by gun-toting bandits, he called for the deployment of the SWAT Unit to take them on, on an equal footing. The regular Police were invariably late on the scene, even after frantic calls and it was suspected they feared they\u2019d be outgunned.
\nWell, the SWAT Unit WAS rushed out to Berbice but it was the \u201cregular\u201d Police who, evidently acted on intelligence, swooped down on the bandits\u2019 hideout and claiming they were greeted by gun fire, returned the same and killed all three bandits. Now we know they were the bandits since an AR15, several handguns, bullets, burglary equipment, jewellery and cash were recovered. But several questions arise.
\nThe first one, of course, is why hadn\u2019t the Police launched this operation before?? From what we heard from relatives after the strike, all three dead bandits were \u201cknown characters\u201d, whose homes had been raided before when crimes in the area had been committed. What was lacking, in the estimation of your Eyewitness, was the intelligence. And the main reason for this is there aren\u2019t enough Police personnel drawn from the local communities who would be able to cultivate a network of informers to keep them posted.
\nThese bandits didn\u2019t helicopter out after their depredations. Like the bandits who\u2019d been holed up in Buxton back in the day, these fellas remained in the community \u2013 and obviously were supported by their own network in the community. We\u2019re told they had freshly cooked food \u2013 someone must\u2019ve have prepared and delivered this! Police intelligence is lacking in all areas of the country \u2013 and this leads to another question on the minds of some citizens.
\nAre the Police in cahoots with some of the criminals?? And is this why in most of these encounters, the bandits are invariably all slaughtered and the Police don\u2019t even get a scratch? If there were actually bullets flying first from the bandits \u2013 as is invariably the reason given by the Police for their deadly fusillade \u2013 how come their element of surprise is always lost?? Is it a case of dead men don\u2019t tell no tales??
\nLast month we learnt that Police were being equipped with body cameras for traffic stops and other ordinary interactions with the public. Shouldn\u2019t the units conducting raids with the possibility of using deadly force also wear cameras as Standard Operating Practice??
\nYour Eyewitness won\u2019t discuss the accusations by some that deadly force is only used on bandits of a certain ilk.
\nSave to note this was this point made by Mr Hoyte, re \u201cBlackie\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u2026and its origins
\nIn the mind-boggling round of criminality kicked off in the first decade of this millennium \u2013 with its epicentre in Buxton and led by the prison-breakout Mash 5 \u2013 there was a welter of analyses on the conditions producing it. While there were vehement disputations on many points, there was unanimity on two: the bandits were prison graduates and were nurtured in poverty stricken environments. There evidently weren\u2019t too many ways to enjoy the \u201cgood life\u201d by honest means.
\nAnd what do we already know about the Berbice bandits? They were all prison graduates and were operating in Berbice, which had always been at the lower end of the economic ladder. But with 4000+ sugar workers thrown out of work, they quickly slid to the bottom. The point is, while structural factors mightn\u2019t ALWAYS compel people into certain actions, they certainly encourage those actions.
\nAnd it\u2019s for this reason, the Government should\u2019ve rethought their unilateral action on sugar. But vengeance is mine, said the PNC!<\/p>\n
\u2026and punishment
\nIt was interesting that after one person was apprehended for a murder committed at Leguan, the father of the victim wrote a fervent thank you to some high-level Police officials from GT.
\nWhy couldn\u2019t the arrest be made by the locals?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u2026and retribution Your Eyewitness was one of those who called for a more proactive response by the Police to the crime tsunami sweeping the country in general, and Berbice in particular. With the overwhelming majority of the crimes being committed by gun-toting bandits, he called for the deployment of the SWAT Unit to take them on, on an equal footing. The regular Police were invariably late on the scene, even after frantic calls and it was suspected they feared they\u2019d be outgunned. Well, the SWAT Unit WAS rushed out to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"gutentor_comment":0,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53172"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53187,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53172\/revisions\/53187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}