Saturday, March 7 2009

Only six percent of inquiries into police killings of civilians have been completed in the past ten years. This according to a recent report from the United States’ Department of State — and it is telling that such a report should emanate from a foreign country, rather than from our own Ministry of National Security.

At first blush, this might seem to be incontrovertible evidence that police officers are not interested in investigating killings by one of their own. On the other hand, the detection rate for murders in general is hardly any better, at ten percent. There can be little doubt that that low detection rate is a key factor in the climbing homicide numbers, since if murderers know that there is only a one-in-ten chance they will be caught, they will be increasingly bold in committing their crimes. And, indeed, this seems to be what is happening. That psychological incentive will also affect police officers, who if they know they will not be punished for breaking the law, even if they commit murder, will be all the more likely to abuse their authority. And that in itself will contribute to a further breakdown of law and order.

In the past decade, there has been a steady rise in the number of police killings. From a rate of less than one per month in 1999, police now kill an average of three persons every month, usually in alleged shootouts. And we must say “alleged” since nearly all the officers involved in these killings are still on duty with their names still not cleared of any wrong-doing.

This is hardly surprising since the Police Complaints Authority, the body set up to investigate the abuse of authority within the Police Service, does not have the power to initiate independent investigations. Instead, the PCA has to depend on active police officers to carry out such investigations, and it is a well-known principle that himself investigating himself will usually exonerate himself. In this particular instance, it does not lead to any outcome at all.

For this reason, the Government has committed itself since 2003 to replace the PCA by an external independent Review Authority which will investigate all complaints by members of the public against police officers. This body was supposed to be functioning since 2007 but there has been no action on this front from the Ministry of National Security, which has responsibility for setting up the body.

Clearly, there is little or no political will to make police officers more accountable. Indeed, the PCA itself was set up only in 1993 — ie it took more than a generation after independence for the powers-that-be to see the need to oversee the Police Service. So if and when the Review Authority is created, much effort will have to go into ensuring that they are an effective body. In this regard, the money spent so uselessly to bring down retired British police officers could probably have been better expended by using them in the Authority.

Now that the time of plenty has passed, however, such an option may be closed. But, given that the spokespersons for the Police Service keep reiterating that they need the public’s help in reducing crime, they should push for the Review Authority to be set up, since this will be key to gaining citizens’ trust. In the meantime, the Acting Police Commissioner should ensure that the investigations into police killings are put on the fast-track, so this embarrassing six percent completion rate can be improved.