As crackdown continues
As the Guyana Police Force continues its crackdown of cars with heavily tinted glass, another driver was fined for the offence.
Winston Goodluck appeared at the Wales Magistrate’s Court last Thursday and was fined $5000 for prohibition of tinted glass. He accepted the Police prosecution’s case which stated that on April 27, 2018 at Wales, he drove motor vehicle PSS 4072 with glass tinted beyond the legally prescribed Visible Light Transmission percentage (VLT%).
Magistrate Rochelle Liverpool informed Goodluck that he will spend one week in prison if he does not pay the fine. Many car drivers have been frequently engaging in the practice of using darker tint over the years, with many justifying their reasons, highlighting that various levels of Police ranks would drive with tinted glass.
However, owing to security concerns, the Force has been clamping down on such vehicles. At various intervals last year, Police ranks were not excluded from the crackdown as many of their privately owned vehicles were stripped of tint.
In December 2017, Traffic Chief Dion Moore related that 23 vehicles used for patrol purposes were stripped which was added to the 65 vehicles privately owned which were stripped in August of that year.
At the time, the Traffic Chief had stated that the Police must set an example to the public. “If we are to address the issue of the general public, then we must first look at ourselves; and that is exactly what we are doing. The public must not see us doing the same wrong things that we are punishing them for,” he noted.
Acting Police Commissioner David Ramnarine had also warned officers that unless they have been granted special exemption for tint on their private vehicles, they would be equally subjected to penalties.
“There is a law for tint. The law is not for some. The only law I know is when the chief licensing authority grants an exemption, and in a few other cases,” he had noted
In was in 2016 that Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan said Government would have moved to review the policy regarding tint on motor vehicles as one of the components of the national crime-fighting strategy.
It was announced then that tint meters would be used to determine the density of the tint on vehicle windows.
As it currently stands, only certain vehicles are permitted to have tint without the expressed permission of the Public Security Minister. These include diplomatic vehicles and those belonging to senior Government and high-ranking military officials.
