The Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Mohabir Anil Nandlall, SC, endorsed a recent directive from the Commissioner of Police, Clifton Hicken.
Hicken instructed members of the Guyana Police Force to refrain from arbitrarily stopping vehicles and demanding drivers produce their licences.
Speaking at the commissioning ceremony for the Mahdia Magistrate’s Court in Region Eight on Friday, Minister Nandlall said the directive signals a positive shift within the Guyana Police Force.
According to information from the Guyana Police Force, Hicken also warned officers against stopping persons on the road without turning on their body cameras.
“I’m happy that the commissioner recently in a conversation with the police force said, ‘You can’t stop people on the road willy nilly’…That was illegal 40 years ago. It is still illegal now. You have to have reasonable cause or suspicion,” AG Nandlall expressed.
Minister Nandlall spoke of cases where persons may be stopped and asked to show their licence, followed by a series of other inspections that he described as nothing more than a “fishing expedition.”
“When you ask me for my licence, I show you, my licence. Then you have to check my brakes’ light; then you have to check my blinker. Then you want to see my spare tyre. You are now finding a cause to justify your stopping of me in the first place,” he said.
The legal affairs minister said that as information becomes more readily available, the public is now more aware of their rights and they have a right to hold the police to a higher standard.
According to the AG, this demonstrates the level to which the force, and by extension the legal fraternity, must elevate their services to meet the demands of a more educated population.
“We all owe a duty to the public to ensure that the decisions that we make are fair, are transparent, are in accordance with law and can withstand public scrutiny,” the AG implored.
The legal affairs minister said he plans to engage the legal fraternity to create an accountable and an efficient mechanism for members of the public to lodge their complaints regarding the professional conduct of lawyers.
“There is a system in place, but the general view out there is that the system is not working, and we have to have that conversation going forward. We live in a different type of society. Thirty years ago, things were different. People didn’t have the access that they have now,” the senior council stated. (DPI)
