The scandal involving the discovery of a cell phone taped under a table in a police station interviewing room while a lawyer conferred with her client escalated on Wednesday with the Barbados Bar Association (BBA) calling for a commission of inquiry into the incident.
Convenor of the association’s Criminal Law Council, Martie Garnes, said the BBA is keeping all its legal options open at this point on how to proceed in the event they did not get to see a copy of the full report from a previous Regional Security System (RSS) investigation into the matter
and a commission of inquiry was not started.
“Even if it is that they don’t want to go so far as to do a commission of inquiry, let’s have an independent body deal with that investigation,” he said at a press conference. “Who is policing the police?”
Garnes also insisted that the authorities need to make changes to interviewing rooms in the island’s police stations to better protect client-attorney privilege.
It was on February 4 that attorney-at-law Faith Greaves discovered the phone that was taped under the table while she met with a client at the District ‘E’ station in Speightstown. Greaves recalled that she heard “a loud crashing sound in the room” and later discovered a mobile phone that had three pieces of duct tape attached to it.
In a letter to Greaves last month, Commissioner of Police Richard Boyce said that the RSS investigation had found that the phone in question was “unserviceable and there was no recording on the phone”.
On Wednesday, Greaves said that in a written response to Commissioner Boyce, “we will be requesting a copy of the said RSS report”.
According to Garnes, a public inquiry into the incident would, among other things, help to determine if from the time the cellphone was discovered it was placed into custody and not tampered with.
He said there were still too many unanswered questions, including whether that investigation included finding out who was the owner of the cell phone and if there was not recording, if a call was in progress at the time the lawyer met with her client.
“They are saying the phone is unserviceable. I find that quite odd and quite strange,” Garnes told reporters.
“In his letter, the Commissioner of Police referred to it as a ‘multipurpose’ room and that is true . . . . Sometimes you have to cease communication with a client because an officer wants to go and print something. This is not a minor breach. It is a major breach.
“We are asking at this point that a commission of inquiry be conducted in this matter because the mere fact that the presence of a phone that has three pieces of duct tape on it; that, in and of itself, has breached client-attorney privilege. It could only be two reasons that [phone] is there – either one, you are calling that phone before the attorney comes in, and [you are] listening in, or two, it is being used to record. So, if it is there is nothing on it, was it used to transmit? That is the question . . . the police now have to answer.”
Stating that he was aware of a process to be followed for a commission of inquiry, Garnes said Barbados had expert commissioners and it was now a matter of “if we are willing to use them”.
He also used the opportunity to call on authorities to make changes in interviewing rooms in police stations, insisting there was a need for greater accountability and protection of the constitutional rights of all residents.
“Oistins Police Station, for example, their interview room is right next to a car park. A normal civilian can literally lean against a window and listen in on your conversation. There is no dedicated room,” Garnes said, adding that lawyers found that sometimes “a tile or two in the ceiling is shifted in the room at some police station”, which made them suspicious.
Asked if there had been any improvement in how lawyers meet with clients at the District ‘E’ Police Station since the incident, Garnes told journalists: “Instead of meeting in the 30×30 room that everyone can see in, and there are ‘mommy and daddy hampers’ around you, and the fridge is around the corner and the printer in the front part of the room, they have now put us into the interviewing room.”
The attorney said he recently had to use the room and he was given the option to “check” it prior to his consultation.
“In that room again, this is where you record the interview, you will be in a room that has a camera here and a camera there and you don’t know if they are on,” he said. “So you don’t know if the police [are] listening in the same way…. So it now begs the question, are they listening in or are they not?
“Even at CID [Criminal Investigation Department], Harbour Road, I can hear the police officers outside. So if I can hear them, they can hear me.”
Garnes said authorities should look at creating dedicated sound-proof interview rooms for attorney-client conferences.
“The only police station I would say has state-of-the-art facilities would be Hastings-Worthing. When you go there, they have a dedicated room and it is locked and only one police officer has access to that room,” he said, acknowledging that that police station was a new one.
The lawyers made it clear that they had no animosity towards the Barbados Police Service or its members but said they were seeking answers and greater accountability, describing the situation as one that should cause outrage among all citizens.
Bar association leaders added that attorneys were now trying to reestablish their trust in the police service.
