Reply to "Family recalls horrifying moment SWAT team invaded home and fatally shot businessman"

Last Wednesday businessman Mr Orin Boston was lying in his bed around 4 am in Dartmouth, Essequibo, when a SWAT team kicked down the back door of his home, burst into the bedroom and shot him. Initial reports said he was shot in the arm, but according to the post-mortem results he was shot once in the chest. The police account of events was that ranks had been conducting an anti-crime operation in Region Two and that they had gone to Mr Boston’s house to conduct a search. During the process there had been a “confrontation” between him and the police which had resulted in him being shot.

Mr Boston’s widow, Feona, did not endorse this version; she said her husband had showered and retired to bed, and that he did not even have clothes on when the police went into the room, and pointed the gun at him. She also said that the members of the team were all over the house with guns, and her two children aged six and seven witnessed the entire ordeal. The bloodied bedsheet, which the police took away subsequently, supplies verification, if any were needed, that he was indeed shot in bed, and not in the course of any confrontation.

Acting Commissioner Nigel Hoppie was later to say that the operation began around 2 am on Wednesday and had involved several villages in the region. Prior to arriving at Mr Boston’s house, two other homes had been searched, and that the SWAT team had been sent there because of intelligence which the police had received. In the case of Mr Boston that related to “prohibited items” in the house, although the Commissioner admitted to the media that none was found.

The police did, however, arrest four people in Onderneeming, including two murder suspects. Deputy Commissioner of Operations (ag) Clifton Hickens for his part said that the team, consisting of one gazetted officer and eleven ranks had been dispatched to the area on Tuesday, and that none of them had been equipped with a body camera. The SWAT unit, he said, was necessary for the operation.

The same modus operandi followed during the search of Mr Boston’s home had also been used earlier that morning in the case of Mr Orin Klass’s house at Onderneeming, where the SWAT team had arrested his stepson for questioning about a murder-robbery. Around 3 am the ranks broke down the door of his house, causing his children to start screaming. His daughter particularly, he related, screamed when she saw the gunmen. In addition to the traumatisation of his children, he said the police assaulted him and damaged many of his household items, including two doors and a wardrobe.

Exactly why, as Mr Klass noted, the team could not have asked to see his stepson instead of damaging his property, has not been explained. Alternatively, as he also observed, they could have sent a police officer from Region Two to arrest him quietly.

The killing of Mr Boston triggered a protest action by local residents who blocked the main road, set debris as well as various objects on fire and demanded justice. Normally speaking, there is nothing like a protest in this country to concentrate the minds of the upper political echelons wonderfully, but in this instance not a word has been heard from that quarter, not even from Home Affairs Minister Robeson Benn who has been incommunicado since it happened. The police, however, responded with some dispatch, saying that the officer who shot Mr Boston was under close arrest, and that a police investigation would be undertaken by the Office of Professional Responsibility, an internal police body.

The family’s lawyers were not impressed and outlined the questions any investigation needed to ask, adverting to the “hostile position” adopted by the Police Force in “attributing to Mr. Boston acts of aggression which are contradicted by both the eyewitnesses and the independent evidence.” It was indicative of “patent defensiveness and desire to conceal the true sequence of events,” they said.

The GPF wasted no time in responding by saying: “The Guyana Police Force is assuring the relatives of Orin Boston and the general public, that the Police Force has no desire to ‘conceal the true sequence of events’, but on the contrary will be conducting a thorough, impartial and professional investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Orin Boston.”

Not everyone is persuaded: not just the family and their lawyers, but also the two segments of the opposition, as well as the WPA ‒ not forgetting of course, the residents of Dartmouth and neighbouring areas. AFC Leader Khemraj Ramjattan queried the use of a SWAT team in the Region Two exercise.  “SWAT is only used in situations where there is a heightened threat of violence … such as when you had the situation in Bath where police officers were being attacked … These arrests could have been done in the normal course by local detectives trained in these matters,” he said.

He was not the only one to ask why a SWAT team without a warrant was needed to search for prohibited items in the early hours of the morning. Retired Chief of Staff of the GDF Gary Best speaking at a PNCR press conference said: “If you are going to go into someone’s home, without a warrant as stated, then there is a particular section within the law that allows you to do that. Notwithstanding that, I would say based on my experience that the intelligence must be targeted and the decision to use the SWAT must come from the top brass of the Guyana Police Force.” The WPA also queried whether the objective of the exercise warranted a SWAT intervention.

But the AFC had a more disturbing claim to make, and that was that police headquarters was unaware of the deployment. As such as their statement said, this suggests political interference in the operations of the GPF. If true, it would account for the utter silence from the government, despite the fact that only recently President Irfaan Ali handed over 50 vehicles to the Force, and spoke glibly about strengthening it and issuing body-cameras among other things, to its members.

The problem for the PPP/C is that it has a bad record where interfering with the Police Force is concerned, as well as with its tolerance for extra-judicial killings by the Target Special Squad especially, which it demonstrated great reluctance to disband. Then there were the unholy alliances between elements in the police and drug squads after the 2002 prison breakout. The fears are that the new security squad which it will be setting up, ostensibly under the auspices of the army, will be another vehicle for government policing outside the purview of the senior members of the GPF.

The lawyers for the family, as well as the AFC and the WPA consider there should be an independent investigation, with Mr Khemraj Ramjattan advocating a probe led by a retired senior regional security official. Mr Best in contrast, has expressed the confidence of the PNCR in the Police Commissioner to conduct the investigation. He was quoted as saying, “[W]e ought to give them [GPF] the opportunity to conduct that investigation and based on that outcome the party will then reflect on what will be its next stages.”

While contrary to what the lawyers have claimed this may not be a case of “murder” in a technical sense, something which the Commissioner has strenuously denied, it has, prima facie at least, the hallmarks of an extra-judicial killing. If this is so, it represents an era the country would not wish to return to. If it is indeed the case that the senior hierarchy of the Force did not send the SWAT team, then a thorough investigation by the police taking all the evidence into account and identifying who dispatched the unit is not to be expected. Even if someone in the GPF did send them in – and that should have been done with the approval of Mr Hoppie – no one has any particular confidence that the truth will emerge if the police investigate themselves. If President Ali is sincere about cleaning up the Police Force, he should have no hesitation about appointing an independent investigator.