Before the decision was taken by police to seize the mobile phone and tablet computer belonging to former TV presenter and immigration official Norman Vella, they needed to be as certain as could be of one thing: that they would find what they were looking for.
Anything short of that meant that they would end up with egg on their face. Which is precisely what happened.
First things first: were the police correct to investigate the complaint that Mr Vella had taken pictures with his mobile phone of two government spokesmen, Kurt Farrugia and Ramona Attard, at the airport departures lounge?
On the face of it, the police should investigate every complaint they receive. But they must also use common sense and discretion. This is why it is relevant who made the complaint. It stretches the realms of credibility to suggest it was made by an ordinary passenger with a social conscience. This means the complaint came either from someone working at the airport or through the political domain.
Such a red light should have made them tread extra carefully, particularly given the profile of the person they were dealing with and the fact that Mr Vella has already complained of political discrimination in other matters.
But instead they waded in, guns blazing as it were, holding Mr Vella for some four hours, seizing his mobile gadgets and refusing to hand them back. The more time passed, the more it was becoming obvious to everyone that the police were on a wild goose chase.
Yet they persisted. And the Police Commissioner unwisely got himself into the mire, submitting in his evidence at a subsequent court hearing a CCTV image of Mr Vella “looking” at his mobile phone. This almost beggars belief. The magistrate herself said that immigration officers were not banned from using these devices during working hours, and if it were a crime to look at a mobile phone, our prisons would contain the entire population.
How could our police force take such drastic action, in 2013, on such spurious grounds? This kind of behaviour is highly inappropriate in a supposedly free country; one, because it gives the impression that they will seek to invade a person’s privacy – mobile phones and tablet computers contain more personal information than anything else we possess in the modern world; secondly, and here’s the rub, that they have yet again got involved in a case that they knew very well had political undercurrents, seemingly in defence of the Government.
As if the connection between the police and Government has not been blurred enough in recent months, Mr Vella testified that he heard a police officer mentioning the name of Silvio Scerri, the Ministry of Home Affairs chief of staff. Mr Scerri has said he phoned the police’s communications unit after he was called by journalists and did not ask about the investigation. However, why is it that his name is cropping up repeatedly when questions have been raised about police actions? Is he just unlucky or is there more to it? The growing perception is the latter.
None of this reflects well on the police, or the Government. The issue here goes way beyond one individual, Mr Vella in this case, being unfairly targeted. It is about public confidence in our police force and the Government’s relationship with it. This has not been seriously called into question for some years. But it most certainly is now, which gives us all something to worry about.