Three years ago a team of British police trainers were in Guyana. Their mission was to train members of the Tactical Services Unit to operate in a professional manner so that they apprehend criminal elements without much casualty.Following several weeks of intense training, there was a demonstration at the Diamond facility on the East Bank of Demerara.Everyone was impressed with the demonstration in which close to 100 ranks participated. But that was a staged scenario.Additionally, this was a precursor to the establishment of a special unit of police operatives who will confront dangerous criminals such as the UK-based SWAT team.Although the then Police Commissioner Winston Felix had made it clear that there would be no SWAT unit in Guyana,
Cheap Jerseys, the government kept up the insistence that a SWAT unit will be formed.Since then those who benefited from the training have very little to show for the efforts of the British.Criminals continue to hold their own against the security forces so much so that there have been massacres from Agricola to Eccles, from Lusignan to Bartica and more recently at Lindo Creek in the Berbice River, (although there is some controversy over the most recent episode).Now the British trainers are back and many are questioning whether their input into the local crime fighting methods will bear fruit.For one, they have recommended that the current armory of the local police force be modified.The British have recommended that the force do away with the old and outdated carbines and M-70 rifles for the more modern MP-5 semi automatic weapon.But security experts in Guyana are laughing at such a recommendation.Former Target Special Squad operative Ian ‘Gangsta’ Smith had told this newspaper in a previous interview that such tactics will not work, since in Guyana the law enforcement agency is dealing with criminals who are armed with the deadly AK-47 assault rifle, against which the MP-5 will not be effective.The case of the British style mode of apprehension of criminals without casualty would be hard to emulate in Guyana, since the criminals here are more prone to challenging the security forces rather than surrendering.“These criminals here,
Cheap Jerseys From China, although they are surrounded, always feel that they could shoot their way out,” another former crime fighter told this newspaper.But Acting Police Commissioner Henry Greene is confident that the British training which comes under the security sector reform programme will go a far way in bringing Guyana’s police force up to scratch with standard operating procedures in the developed world.?“We’re looking forward to their bringing up our people, our tactical ranks to the stage where we can involve ourselves in any operation, and involve ourselves well, so that we maintain the fact that we can face any group out there effectively and successfully and we look forward to their help and their support in that respect,” Greene said.Heads of Police Operations, Assistant Commissioner Paul Slowe, explained that this is the second phase of training for a special police anti-crime unit and will focus mainly on training persons who will then be required to train others within the local organisation.“They have come to continue the exercise where they will be involved in tactical training with the ranks from the TSU. The plan at this stage is to train the ranks who are involved in training so that when they (British) would have left,
Cheap China Jerseys, the people who would have been trained will continue to train those in the force,” Slowe told this newspaper.But according to a reliable source, since the last training stint, several of those who benefited have left the force or have been transferred to other divisions where their expertise is not being fully utilized.Greene had stated that the police plan to have trained Tactical Service Unit ranks at every police station, so that a quicker response to armed criminal activity will be effected.Another aspect being questioned is the use of ranks from the Tactical Services Unit for such a plan.The Tactical Services Unit is seen as the dumping ground for police ranks who have fallen foul of the force regulations and, according to a police official,
NFL Jerseys Wholesale From China, they are not adequately endowed to form any special unit to effectively combat criminals who have now become more sophisticated in their operations.“These TSU men are now being referred to as ‘towel police’. They go out, bully people for money and then come back in and that’s it,
Cheap NFL Jerseys,” the official said.The local security sector is benefiting from a US$20M loan to address the country’s growing security dilemma under t
