Gavin Douglas Was Killed

On Saturday the Guyana Police Force told the nation that GavinKennard Douglas became aggressive, was restrained, and was later found frothing at the mouth in the lockups at the Vreed-en-Hoop Police Station. Meanwhile, the post-mortem conducted by the Government Pathologist has found that he died of a brain haemorrhage due to blunt trauma, and two Taser studs were removed from his body. His family, who witnessed the post-mortem, say that his intestines were ruptured. Guyanese are not surprised that the statement given by the police has turned out to be an exceedingly sanitised, if not downright misleading, version of events. What we are is outraged. We are shocked, and we are distressed by these findings, which suggest that one of our citizens was tortured in police custody.

We do not trust the police to investigate the police, and no Guyanese should be asked to. The investigation sits with the Office of Professional Responsibility, a unit of the Guyana Police Force. The four ranks arrested are being held by the Tactical Services Unit, another unit of the same Force. Eyewitness accounts now suggest that the station’s recordings may have been tampered with before senior officers arrived. A Force that has already given the nation a sanitised account of how Gavin Douglas died cannot be trusted with the evidence, and it cannot be trusted to tell us the truth about what happened to him.

Full coverageGavin Douglas Dies in Police Custody at Vreed-en-Hoop Station11 reports

President Irfaan Ali knows there is another way, because he has taken it before. In 2022, when police shot and killed Quindon Bacchus, the President told the nation that the Police Complaints Authority, chaired by retired Justice