The Guyana Police Force (GPF) Academy on Monday opened its second Junior Officers’ Course for 2026, bringing together local officers and participants from eight Caribbean territories.
Fourteen GPF officers are enrolled, along with representatives of the Guyana Defence Force, Guyana Prison Service, City Constabulary and Guyana Revenue Authority. The regional participants are from The Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Speaking at the opening ceremony at the Police Officers’ Mess Annexe, Commissioner of Police Clifton Hicken said the programme was intended to prepare officers for supervisory responsibilities. He described it as one of the Force’s principal leadership training courses and said it was the third such course held since the academy attained national accreditation in 2023 and international accreditation in 2024.
Hicken said the course was redesigned in 2023 to place greater emphasis on leadership, ethics, critical thinking, accountability, technology and decisions informed by evidence.
Participants will undertake classroom instruction and practical exercises covering team management, communication, organisational policies and the use of technology. Hicken urged them to draw on the experience of officers from other agencies and countries, saying that many challenges facing law enforcement extended beyond any one organisation or territory.
He also said effective policing depended on relationships with the public and other agencies, and told the officers they would be expected to uphold professional standards as they took on greater responsibility.
The commissioner outlined plans to expand specialist training in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, intelligence analysis, digital forensics and data analytics. He said the Force aimed to increase its professional, technical, leadership and specialist training capacity by 80% by 2031.
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