See something, say something?

THE EDITOR: I make reference to the Prime Minister’s reported comments at the recent opening of the Roxborough Police Station.

The PM is absolutely on the right track in regard to his statement on the matter of reporting crimes in our communities. However, given the context of his presentation, the PM wasn’t as instructive as he could or should have been on the topic.

When CID police take statements from victims then file them away in office cabinets because sleuthing is just too hard and time consuming (unless it’s a high-profile case when their names get mentioned in the news and they come up for kudos during a promotion exercise), witnesses and victims first become disillusioned then desensitised against the war against crime.

Most importantly, all are only too keenly well aware that the level of trust in the integrity of the police is sufficiently diminished to have a significant negative impact, although the Commission of Police (CoP) and some senior officers are trying their best to reverse the situation in this regard.

To this end, it would appear to any eagle-eyed observer that there are ongoing fiery battles being waged on conflicted principles between the CoP and some of his own men by commissions, omissions and acts of sabotage, even against victims and witnesses of crime, the overall impact of which erodes potential successes of the TTPS.

As there is little faith by members of the public in the TTPS’s internally-operated Professional Standards Bureau to effectively sanction not just some but all of its own against competing CoP objectives, discharge of this body should be highly considered if on a balance of probabilities it appears incapable of attracting and providing the highest standard of diligence and successes demanded by the public, notwithstanding the bureau’s responding officers’ knee-jerk responses that all public complaints are taken seriously.

An annual public account and discussion of the work of the bureau within a comparatively large police force should have been made mandatory a long time ago to keep it in line with principled objectives.

Perhaps in all the circumstances, in regard to the TTPS, consideration should be now given to an independent joint select committee of Parliament and audit, inviting, among other mechanisms, oral and written submissions from the bureau as well as the Police Complaints Authority in relation to how comparable crimes are reported across the country.

This could be done in relation to category of person (by ethnicity and place of abode, etc), the response time by the police, the quality of reporting and witness experiences, including initial and continuing contact, communication, follow-ups and successes, or lack of. Of critical importance should be written and/or oral submissions by members of the public impacted by police – by ethnicity and location of reports.

If in an unlikely event a victim/witness surpasses almost insurmountable hurdles previously mentioned, the final phase, namely success at the prosecutorial level, is co-dependent on unknown but existing, unequal relationships between and among juridical officers.

As it stands, to be routinely successful a victim/witness invariably is seen to reside within a higher echelon in his community, where a combination of his money, power, gender and/or colour are powerful determinants in regard to justification and his credibility before the law.

As a consequence, the “see something, say something” saga is far more complex and less reassuring than first imagined in reducing crime rates.

KATHLEEN PINDER

St Ann’s