Pop! goes the Police Force Wednesday Ramblings
Stabroek News
September 25, 2002
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The police are said to be waiting on a shipment of weapons to take on the bandits. What has not been made clear is that these will be toy guns to combat the rising use of such weapons by criminal elements.

The police felt that their toy guns had become inadequate since they were acquired some time in the late seventies. The pistols used to pop out a cork and had long ago stopped scaring criminals, who at the time were using wooden guns, which fired lethal rubber bands, primarily aimed at the back of the knee. In addition a police gun, which used to unfurl a red flag which said "Bang" was considered ineffective since many bandits were illiterate. The disparity between the criminals' firepower and that of the men in blue deteriorated rapidly in the early nineties when the police discovered the first toy rifle in Guyana. This was made of heavy-duty Chinese plastic and a metal alloy, had "Roy Rodgers" autographed on the barrel and came with a free cowboy hat.

It was a worrying development. And then, only this year a bandit was found with a machine gun, which lit up red when fired and made a rat-a-tat sound. He had reportedly made the purchase through an intermediary - his seven-year-old cousin - from Fogarty's.

So with the help of the British High Commission, a senior police officer was last month dispatched to the United Kingdom to purchase a cache of toy weaponry. He has already visited a number of toy stores. While the details of the purchase are confidential WR has learnt that it will include pistols that give off a green glow and advanced machine guns, which tell the victim, "You are dead. You are dead." In addition to the weaponry, the police will be kitted out with foam truncheons and plastic handcuffs. Knives with blades which retract when pushed into a victim were ruled out as being too gruesome. Fake blood capsules are being considered as the police believe this will send a strong message to the bandits.

The British government will also be offering training to police ranks in the proper sound effects they should use when firing these new guns. Traditionally in Guyana this has been "baddam!" or for pistols "pow pow" but the GPF has been informed that these do not have quite the same effect as "dududududu" or "ehehehehehehehe". As it is, WTO rules stipulate that all such sound effects are to be standardised throughout the world by 2005.

Miss World

Why are we not more concerned about the new Miss Guyana/World Odessa Phillips? It appears from recent photos that her tiara has been surgically implanted into her scalp and will remain there until she arrives in Nigeria. How awkward it must be, having to sleep in this strange ornament; to sit at the breakfast table in a nightgown wearing it; to wash one's hair. What does the Queen actually talk about when she makes her courtesy calls? Oh to be a fly on the wall during the penetrating conversation with the President.

One can imagine Jagdeo nervously pushing up his spectacles as Phillips grills him on the stalled consultations with the opposition. In fact what better symbol than to have Miss Guyana/World as the nation's peace broker? First item on the agenda: Lipstick for deprived mothers.

Meanwhile the controversy still rages over her victory. Did she really ask Ron Robinson to repeat the question? Heaven forbid!

Despite severe admonitions from this column, people really have written to the newspapers encouraging the nation to rally around her! What this entails one cannot be sure. How does one rally around a beauty queen? Of course these things are not to be laughed at. Which elitist dares to snort at the efforts of the "young Vergeneogen beauty"? Neither should we be amused by the threatened boycott of the pageant being held in Nigeria, something the Moslems of that country would love more than anything else.

Of course the contestants are missing the point. Receiving a bikini wax and having to keep smiling for two weeks is truly more abusive than being stoned to death, something which sounds like a quite romantic way to go.

Miss Guyana could earn much more than her ten seconds of fame by donning a Golden Arrowhead burka as her national garment in "protest at abused Moslem women worldwide."

GINA press release

The sitting of Parliament scheduled for tomorrow will now be held next Monday, according to a GINA press release. The release said this message was conveyed by two men standing in front of the Stabroek Market on Tuesday afternoon. A boy selling oranges overheard them and told a customer who went home and told her father who mentioned this to his neighbour who called his cousin who works as a cleaning lady at GINA who told a worker who wrote this story.