Police vigilance is crucial

No modern state can exist without law enforcement and a police force is a necessary requisite of any such system. By its very nature, a police force must have draconian powers that conflict with the notion of individual freedom and rights. Hence, these powers must be limited and the members of the police force must know how to apply discretion when using them.

Since police officers are human beings, the temptation to abuse of their powers is part of their life. In fact, no country can boast that no members of its police force have ever abused of their powers. Examples even from the US and from the UK - where the unnecessary killing of the innocent Brazilian Jean Charles De-Menendes still haunts everyone's memory - abound. Moreover, as in the case of Menendes, even respectable high-ranking police officers resort to lying to cover up the abuses of their subordinates. Cover-ups, however, tend to set the stage for further abuses.

Matters get even more complicated when the police force is used as a means to prop up a despotic government for whom flouting democratic principles is run of the mill. But that is another story.

Police abuse cannot be tolerated by any decent self-respecting government but the fact that a government is a decent self-respecting one does not automatically guarantee that every member of the country's police force is beyond abuse.

The story that has been hitting the headlines of the local media since last Sunday is a sharp reminder of the veracity of my argument. A man has died after allegedly escaping from police custody where he was being investigated about allegations about his private behaviour. The official story was that following his alleged escape the man had jumped over the bastions behind the police headquarters at Floriana and almost died as a result. In this story the 'almost' is critical, because he actually died much later. Later enough for him to recount a story that certainly did not tally with the official version of his escape and 'fatal' fall.

I am not in a position to judge which is the correct version and I therefore refrain from taking up the cause that the dead man's family are pursuing or of perfunctorily dismissing it.

However, I cannot renounce from saying that certain aspects of the case that have resulted in the media this week seriously perturb me.

First: the initial reaction of the Home Affairs Minister who was contacted by Malta Today before they broke the story on Sunday. It is obvious that he was unaware of the case and when later he contacted the Police Commissioner he seemed satisfied with the explanation that a magisterial inquiry was already in place.

This is simply normal procedure and accepting it as enough in the circumstances means that the case was not being considered as unusual. It seems that even the office of the Prime Minister was satisfied with this state of affairs. Then, the government had second thoughts.

On Tuesday, the minister announced that he had appointed an independent inquiry to examine the operations of the police corps in the case. To my mind, alarm bells should have rung in the minds of the minister and of the Prime Minister as soon as they were contacted by the newspaper that was going to break the story. The fact that they did not perturbs me.

Then there is the way certain media tackled the story. The Nationalist Party media - TV, radio and newspapers - ignored the story as if it had no news value and only referred to it after government's decision to hold an independent inquiry. How stupidly short-sighted!

Even more jarring was a news item on TVM's main news bulletin last Monday that obviously attempted to dismiss the version of the dead man's family as pure fantasy by reporting the existence of a video showing the arrested man in the yard behind the police HQ. The way this story was couched left no doubt that it was based on information leaked by the police and intended to defend their version of the facts. More so, as it ended by saying that police sources would not confirm or deny the existence of such a tape.

It seems that some people think that loyalty to the government necessarily implies loyalty to the police force. How wrong they are!

Abuse by some police officers should not be interpreted as a bad reflection on the government of the day. It is how the government acts in cases of suspected or confirmed abuse that matters. As usual, the problem stems from the Mintoff inheritance, i.e. from the time when police abuse for political ends was rife. But police abuse is not solely 'inspired' by political ends.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, as Thomas Jefferson put it. Even with a police force that boasts 'Domine Dirige nos' as its motto, vigilance, in which the media has a critical role, is still crucial and indispensable - irrespective of the political party that happens to be in power.

micfal@maltanet.net