Office of Professional Responsibility to actively monitor Police performance

The Guyana Police Force’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is undertaking a programme to tackle the main complaints and issues prevalent in each department.

In an exclusive interview, Police Commissioner Leslie James described it as a “thinking outside of the box initiative”.
According to the Department of Public Information (DPI), the plan will help to better ascertain what are the issues affecting residents and, by extension, what the OPR needs to address urgently within the various communities, the Commissioner said.
The Commissioner was among senior ranks manning the Public Security Ministry’s booth at the Sixth Government Outreach at the National Track and Field Centre in Edinburgh, Berbice.
He explained that previously the OPR gathered information that was fed to it directly. However, by now tasking OPR officials to visit each division, the body and, by extension, the Force, would have an idea of what was going on. The new move will also serve as a tool for understanding how divisional ranks are perceived to be performing by the residents and stakeholders they protect and serve.
Providing an overview of the booth’s activities, Commissioner James said enquiries focused on follow-ups about noise nuisance complaints, investigations, a lack of feedback from stations about incidents, possible false imprisonment cases, gun licence applications and a reported “unusual death” that was currently under investigation.
Sunday’s government outreach follows a similar successful exercise conducted at Fort Wellington in Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice) on April 25. The next outreach will be held in Linden on April 30.