Former Top Cop, Henry Fraser, is a ‘Special Person’“I told my officers to pay attention to the small things that people need help on, because when you need their assistance for the big things, you’ll find that you have little or no help.”By Crystal ConwayHe sat in a chair in his home office, his walking stick hooked on the back of his chair looking ahead. He turned at the sound of voices and the moment he realised he was speaking to a female reporter, Mr. Henry Fraser rose graciously from his chair, though it must have been an effort for him, to offer his greeting in a show of old world courtesy that one rarely sees these days.At 88, the former Commissioner of Police and one of the best detectives this country has ever known, has trouble seeing and moving about. Ten minutes in his company, however, will prove without a doubt that though his body has aged, his mind is as sharp as the day he joined what was then the British Guiana Police Force – some seventy years ago.Born to Guyanese parents in Suriname on December 2, 1922, Henry Alphonso Fraser grew up on Plantation Albion with his parents, two brothers and two sisters. The only qualification that he was able to obtain was his Primary School Leaving Certificate,NFL Jerseys Supply, but he describes himself as “a very ambitious fellow who was determined to succeed”.Mr. Fraser said that he enlisted in 1940 at Albion and made his way down to Georgetown, to the Constabulary School – which is now the Felix Austin Police College. There he was paraded before the Officer in Charge and his assistants. He related that if you were found to be “physically suitable” you were put in another line, alas, the young Fraser was not.He laughed as he recalled what he was told to be the reason behind his rejection: his “chest measurement” was too small and needed to be increased. The 18-year-old Fraser was told that he was too thin. He said that for the next few months he began to train seriously,Cheap Soccer Jerseys Wholesale, making use of a friend’s exercise equipment. The very next year, he was among the 15 young men selected to become Constables. He went through his training and spent a year in the Depot.Mr. Fraser recalls that those were the war years, and in those days there was no national defence force, instead the men of the British Guiana Police Force formed the ‘frontline’.His first posting after leaving training school was to the New Amsterdam Police Station. There, Constable Fraser was assigned to walk the beat, something that he was not unfamiliar with, since during his training he was required to do the same at the Brickdam Police Station.Mr. Fraser recalled that this was his least favourite policing task,Cheap Man City Jersey, saying that in those days Georgetown was a lonely place in the wee hours of the morning and in a country where cars were few and far between, he took to memorising licence plate numbers, the numbering of houses on the streets and even the names of the people living in these homes as a way of keeping his mind active. His powers of observation would serve him well later on in his career and though he may have disliked walking the beat he noted that it had a special importance, especially in New Amsterdam.Though he joined the Force in 1941 it was not his first attempt to do so, nor was it his only choice. He said that after completing his Primary Education at Plantation Albion, he knew that he was either going into the Post Office or the Police Force. Considering his achievements in the Force, it is no stretch of the imagination to say that he would probably have made it all the way up to Post Master General if he had chosen the other career.Mr. Fraser said that in the ‘country’ he began to move about on a bicycle to cover the long lanes and streets. He fondly remembers those to be the days of bicycle classics such as the Raleigh and Rudge, and a bicycle was a must in those parts. He explained that a police bicycle would be fitted with a pump, a tool bag with a spanner, patching kit, rubber and all the essentials to deal with any mechanical problems a rider might encounter.The ‘beat’ that he so disliked was an essential part of the life of a Rural Constable, and it later came to be a most valuable tool. On the beat he met the people of the communities, he began to establish a rapport with them until it came to the point that if one deviated from a regular beat schedule, residents would ask for that constable by name. The people of the communities were also a wealth of information on things that they had seen in their neighbourhoods – information that would be of great use as his career progressed.In 1946, he was made a detective at the age of 23, after successfully completing the detective training. Although there was a detective branch in some stations that was not th