Police Force to benefit from more vehicles, training to boost efficiency – Top Cop

The Guyana Police Force (GPF) is set to benefit from an additional 47 4×4 vehicles next month to improve service delivery.

The fleet of vehicles was acquired utilising funds from the $19 billion allocated to the agency for 2023.

Acting Commissioner of Police, Clifton Hicken made the disclosure during the opening of the annual Police Officers’ Conference on Thursday at the Police Officers’ Mess Annexe, Eve Leary, Georgetown.

“We’ll be receiving 30 more and this by itself will help members of the public whenever they come to the station. We’re striving to ensure all stations are equipped with a vehicle so that they can manage the stations in the district without being supported by other regions,” the top cop explained.

Meanwhile, the force will be able to improve its crime-fighting efforts with the expansion of the safe city initiative to Regions Two, Three, Five, Six, and 10.

“This allocation is intended to boost the police force’s capacity on all fronts…We’ve expanded our safe city programme, which gives us real-time and reduces our response time,” Commission Hicken noted.

He said the 911 extension was expanded to 47 police stations to improve response time to members of the public. Ten additional police outposts were established in Regions One, Two, Three, Four, Six, Seven, and Nine.

In keeping with accountability and upholding discipline in the force, approximately 21 ranks are currently before the courts for various criminal offences.

Meanwhile, GPF has been developing strong police-community ties with an increase in community policing, youth, and scout groups. To date, there are 286 community police groups nationwide, representing a 28 per cent increase.

“Our youth groups have now increased to 65, and that gives us a 50 per cent increase… Our scout groups now increased by 30 per cent too, which tells us that the public is working in conjunction, as we develop capacity for the Guyana Police Force,” Hicken relayed. District and regional intelligence committees were established and ranks are being trained in various languages to be able to communicate with non-English speaking individuals.

A total of 105 ranks benefitted from Portuguese, French, Spanish, and Mandarin to boost efficiency.