The ubiquity of the terror of crime has returned and society must insist that the government draw the lessons from the 15 months of a dastardly crime wave after the infamous Mash Day jail break. We look at two of these lessons.
First, an effective, institutionalised intelligence structure within the security forces must be immediately established if a resurgence of robberies, kidnapping and murders is to be prevented. It is useless lamenting the dissolution of the intelligence service in 1992 when the PPP came to power. That is gone. No rebuke is going to bring it back. But we can restart it. I would put the lack of intelligence gathering as one of the major contributory factors in the prolongation of the Buxton rampage. The two phantom squads were gathering intelligence that was more reliable and useful than the police force and the GDF.
There has been a monumental (and that is even an understatement) emphasis on intelligence gathering since 9/11 by the American government. One suspects that after 9/11, American intelligence officers are going to be roaming the world in all types and shapes - some in three-piece suits posing as businessmen; some with thick lenses on their faces posing as ivory towers professors; some with short skirts looking like young women with fun in the sun on their minds; some with flowers in their hair that makes you feel that they are bringing back the hippie age; some with notebooks and pens pursuing journalistic encounters. They are all officers gathering intelligence that will prevent violence to American society and citizens.
One of the greatest intelligence scoops of the century is Alfredo Scappaticci. The British army used him as an informer for twenty years to gather information on the Irish Republican Army. Scappaticci worked right in the nerve centre of the IRA – its leadership. Here was a man in the leadership of the IRA who was a police informer and who pulled it off for twenty years, retired and was never exposed until an enquiry started this year into the army's role in the IRA conflict. It is quite possible to say that the British security forces have prevented major violent acts by the IRA through the work of Scappaticci. Scappaticci is now a wealthy man. He was handsomely paid each month and banked his cash in Gibraltar . His earnings are in the millions.
As the rebuilding process begins (and one would like believe that it has already judging from some of the successes so far), the government should pay attention to the Scappatici case. The ruling PPP must understand, and their advisers have to drive home this point, that intelligence gathering is an expensive business. Intelligence agents are not normal security officials.
They are specialists doing a specialist job that is extremely dangerous. They are always high priced people. Take Scappaticci. He was not an intelligence officer but an informer.
Yet he was paid on a scale that many high level officers of the army weren't on. If the PPP thinks that it is going to recruit security agents, give them pocket money to buy Chinese fried rice, a pack of Bristol and take a minibus when they are in the fields, then they would have reduced the police force to an object of laughter. It is better then to let Sharma and Vieira run the squad. And the leadership of the police force should not put up with such a caricature.
The work of infiltrating agents is hard and sensitive. These people have to be given all the technical and financial resources to do their jobs. For example, they must have their own vehicles that will give them the required physical movement they need. They need cell phones – at least two to each agent. One number should be open to the agent's friends, the other a private line to his superiors. They must have a constant supply of funds so that when they ingratiate themselves into a criminal company they can use their generosity to win loyalty. In the criminal sub-culture, a recalcitrant is always in need of money, and he tends to remember his acolytes who have been supportive of him in desperate times. And they must have access to at least two or more dwelling houses.
Secondly, the GPF must as a matter of necessity work with state of the art equipment to fight crime. When the escapees went on their maddening spree of violence and murder, the police were outgunned. Their weapons were old, their transmitting sets were inadequate and their vehicles were in short supply. No government can successfully fight crime with such meager resources. Few governments would have survived the population's anger as the Guyana government did after the escapees settled down in Buxton. More than nine months after the explosion began, Vigilance police station still had two lines and both were permanently engaged. This was so callous and insensitive that it bred an uncanny cynicism in many of the residents in Annandale .
In one of my Kaieteur articles, entitled, “THIN LINE OF TERROR, during the height of the killing season, I wrote that some of these residents were literally boiling with anger over the line inadequacy at Vigilance. These people were being robbed, raped and murdered and when they call Vigilance police, the lines were engaged.
A group of fishermen in early 2003 told me that they felt that the PPP was using the killing fields to maintain Indian dislike for the PNC and conversely Indian support for the government. I included those sentiments in the article. It was a puzzle that they couldn't solve and that was the answer they came up with. And maybe they were right. Many observers felt that with an increasing erosion of popular support for the PPP at that time, the Buxton madness may have worked in the PPP's favour. I know some overseas-based intellectuals who emailed me about this theory.
No debate on the recent upsurge in crime can be complete without mention of the ludicrous levels to which the GPF, the GDF and the government were brought down during the reign of terror between 2002-2003. Perhaps the worst was the kidnapping of a businessman from Mahaica. His son drove behind the vehicle. All the police stations on the East Coast were alerted. There was only one road to travel. Buxton then should have been cordoned off and all vehicles entering searched. Yet the kidnappers coolly drove into Buxton with their victim. Such madness should never be allowed to happen again.