Caribbean po­lice com­mis­sion­ers be­gan a five-day meet­ing here, amidst calls for calls for greater at­ten­tion and sup­port for the men­tal health of Po­lice of­fi­cers and a warn­ing against the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty be­ing used as tools to se­cure po­lit­i­cal pow­er.

Ad­dress­ing the open­ing of the 39th an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Com­mis­sion­er’s of Po­lice (AC­CP), Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali called on gov­ern­ments and op­po­si­tion par­ties in the re­gio to cre­at crime se­ri­ous­ly.

“Crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty is not an op­por­tu­ni­ty to get in­to gov­ern­ment,” he said, not­ing that crime erodes pub­lic trust in a democ­ra­cy, re­sult­ing in that sys­tem to be put on its “knees”.

“Crim­i­nal gangs pose a di­rect threat to a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem of gov­ern­ment,” Ali said, telling the top re­gion­al law en­force­ment of­fi­cers that Guyana would be build­ing a re­gion­al foren­sics crime lab­o­ra­to­ry.

He al­so of­fered to fa­cil­i­tate train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties in In­dia and the Guyana De­fence Force Na­tion­al De­fence In­sti­tute for the po­lice forces across the Caribbean.

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and out­go­ing AC­CP pres­i­dent, Atlee Rod­ney, called for greater at­ten­tion and sup­port for the men­tal health of po­lice of­fi­cers, say­ing “as lead­ers, we must place more em­pha­sis on this area and pro­vide more sup­port to our of­fi­cers.

“We, in the Caribbean, must ad­dress this hid­den pan­dem­ic by en­cour­ag­ing pro­fes­sion­al as­sis­tance for our hard­work­ing but so of­ten stressed-out po­lice of­fi­cers,” Rod­ney said, urg­ing his fel­low com­mis­sion­ers and re­gion­al stake­hold­ers to tack­le the is­sue col­lec­tive­ly.

“Our so­ci­eties as a whole will ben­e­fit,” he told the con­fer­ence, adding that re­gion­al po­lice should should max­imise ef­forts to “learn, teach, and net­work” in pur­suit of sus­tain­able so­lu­tions in crime fight­ing in the re­gion.

Rod­ney ac­knowl­edged the dif­fi­cult times cur­rent­ly fac­ing law en­force­ment, but ex­pressed con­fi­dence in the ca­pac­i­ty of the Caribbean po­lice forces to step up their crime-fight­ing ef­forts.

“I en­cour­age us to con­nect with each oth­er, en­gage in so­lu­tion-dri­ven dis­cus­sions and let us ad­vance the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of our com­mu­ni­ties with­in the Caribbean.

“We have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence, and I be­lieve this con­fer­ence gives us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate our com­mit­ment to dis­cov­er prac­ti­cal so­lu­tions to im­prove the safe­ty of our spe­cial peo­ple of this re­gion,” Rod­ney said.

The con­fer­ence aims to strength­en law en­force­ment co­op­er­a­tion, share best prac­tices, and en­hance pub­lic safe­ty in the Caribbean.