Guyana President Ali urges calm as protests continue over alleged release of police officer

Guyana President Irfaan Ali Tuesday urged residents on the East Coast Demerara to allow the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) to do its work as the Guyana Police Force (GPF) deny reports that a policeman who allegedly shot and killed a resident several days ago had been released.

President Ali said he has been assured by the PCA chairman that the investigation is progressing well and should be completed and a report handed over by Monday of next week.

“I am assured by the chairman, retired Justice Ramlall, who has advised me that by very early in the new week, he is hoping that by Monday, he will be in a position to present his report to the DPP”, President Ali said in a televised statement from State House.

Ali told the nation that he had also been informed that a second police officer is now in custody assisting the investigators with the probe. He maintained that the two police officers are still in custody and the probe ongoing and therefore sees no basis for the protests.

“I am asking residents to please go home and please clear the roadway and to please allow the system to work. All of us want justice, and all of us want fairness, but we cannot base our actions on misleading information”, Ali said, adding ““go home, clear the roadways and allow the system to work.

“All of us want justice, all of us want fairness but we cannot base our actions on misleading information. Let us await the outcome of the system and not get emotional and act out of turn, based on reports not grounded in truth and facts,” said President Ali, who returned on Monday night from the Commonwealth Heads of Government conference held in Rwanda last weekend.

Earlier, the police called on the members of the public “to desist from this illegal act” of blocking the road.

“The Guyana Police Force would like to debunk the false claims being made that the policeman involved in the shooting death of Quindon Bacchus was released from police custody. In fact, the police rank in question is under open arrest and confined to police headquarters. The matter is still under investigation,” the police said in a statement.

It warned residents against blocking the road “which is disrupting the flow of traffic” and is also “urging persons to desist from this illegal act and clear the roadway”.

Media reports said a senior police officer and a traffic policeman were forced to beat a hasty retreat by angry residents, who blocked the road at several other points with old wooden stalls, wooden planks, posts, and concrete objects.

Bacchus was shot several times and killed on June 10, this year. There are two accounts - one that Bacchus attempted to sell the undercover policeman a handgun and the other that the two had had a previous misunderstanding.

Bacchus was buried last Sunday.

CMC/