Police ranks ‘ignorant’ of the Constitution, other laws – PCA Chairman

…recommends Force hire competent lawyers to train all ranks

Police ranks have been warned once more by the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) against repeated constitutional violations such as the detention and arrest of members of the public for non-arrestable offences, and based on unlawful stop and search exercises.

Chairman of the PCA, Justice (retd) William Ramlal, in his latest report, said he has established that many Police ranks under investigation by the PCA had flagrantly violated the Constitution of Guyana while carrying out their duties.
He emphasised that it is illegal to arrest members of the public for non-arrestable offences as well as based on unauthorised stops and searches, including “the invasion” of citizens’ homes under the pretext of carrying out a search for firearms and narcotics.
“Numerous complaints were received by the Police Complaints Authority where complainants were arrested first and then what purports to be an investigation takes place and such investigations are in large numbers substandard and done in a bias and prejudicial manner,” Justice Ramlal noted in his 2022 report he recently handed over to the National Assembly.
According to him, these investigations were done in violation of the fundamental rights of the complainants. He pointed out that there were both constitutional and statutory violations where arrests, with or without a warrant, were effected where there was at the time no “reasonable suspicion” that an offence was committed or “about to be committed”.
Spinning off from these infringements, he noted, are “the institution of civil proceedings for compensation, among other things, which the State, in a large number of cases, has to pay”.
To remedy this, he suggested that Police ranks “should be told that they are not authorised to infringe the rights of any person, and if they do, they will be acting outside the scope of their ostensible authority and that the State would not accept the liability a court may pronounce.”
In that way, he reasoned, the ranks will not be lawfully acting as an employee, servant, and/or agent and would be personally liable; adding that this would drastically reduce these ranks’ excesses and by extension reduce the number of complaints to the PCA.
An alarmingly high number of Police ranks are ignorant of the law, the report said.
The PCA Chairman highlighted that over 300 Police ranks he interviewed in 2022 had little knowledge of the Guyana Police Force’s (GPF) Standing Orders, the Constitution, and laws.
Justice Ramlal explained that he interviewed 300 Police ranks from the rank of Senior Superintendent to Rural Constable, inclusive of Community Police.
“These interviews have established that not one Police rank showed knowledge of the Force’s Standing Orders in its entirety or even in a substantial way. Likewise, all these ranks have shown very little knowledge of the fundamental rights of citizens which are clearly written in Articles 138 to 153 of the Constitution. These ranks have shown that they do not have a working knowledge of the following laws which are used by them on a daily basis,” said Justice Ramlal.
These laws include: the Summary Jurisdiction (Offences) Act, the Criminal Law (Offences) Act, the Criminal Law (Procedure) Act, the Administration of Justice Act, the Sexual Offences Act, the Evidence Act, the Juvenile Offence Act, the Domestic Violence Act, the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substance (Control) Act, the Firearms Act, the Combatting of Trafficking in Persons Act and the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Act.
This list is by no means exhaustive.
Justice Ramlall said 95 per cent of the Police ranks he interviewed did not know anything or anything of significance about their powers of arrest with or without a warrant.
He added, “Based on my interview with the Police personnel, a substantial number of Traffic Police, and others as well, misuse their powers of arrest to intimidate citizens for favour or reward. Likewise, the Police in the Criminal Investigation Department misuse their powers of arrest in Summary Conviction matters. Arrests are often carried out without any investigation being done or where there is no reasonable suspicion that someone committed any offence.”
As a result, the PCA Chairman has advised the administration of the Police Force to hire competent lawyers to pursue “serious” training of all Police ranks on the law, particularly on the fundamental rights provisions and the application of the law.
Between January 1 and December 31, 2022, the PCA received 194 complaints.
Of those, 36 were rejected, 52 were closed after initial investigations, and three each were sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Police Commissioner, respectively.
There are a total of 106 open complaints.
A complaint against a Police rank may be made for a variety of reasons, such as dereliction of duty, violence, unlawful arrest, and unlawful stop and search, among others.
When someone makes a complaint, they are interviewed almost immediately by one of the PCA’s investigators. A statement is taken and acted upon once there is merit to the complaint being made. Once a matter is investigated and the officer is found guilty, penalties are suggested to be handed down by the PCA. The PCA is an independent body that receives and looks into public complaints regarding Police misconduct, as well as oversees the investigation of any criminal offences allegedly committed by members of the Force. (G1)