#BTEditorial – Trust in police necessary in crime fight

With the growing wave of anti-establishment sweeping the world, Barbados has not escaped the movement. It is showing up in our educational system and how people interact with traditional systems of authority.

There has been no greater evidence of this than the shift in the relationship between law enforcement and the public. There is an increased level of open resistance to instructions.

The job of police officers has always been challenging but in an era where people are insisting on their rights and are not prepared to accept instructions that are not grounded in law or infringe their rights, cops must act with integrity.

Admittedly, the job of law enforcement has become more complex given developments in technology as people can organise and plan crimes without even being in the jurisdiction, far less at the scene of the crime.

It is now not uncommon to view videos showing open hostility and attempts to physically prevent police officers from undertaking their work including their attempts to arrest persons.

In a 2018 dissertation by Hyunin Baek for his Doctor of Philosophy in Criminal Justice from the University of Louisville, titled Confidence in the Police Among Caribbean Countries, it was posited that public confidence in the police was a global issue and not something unique to the region.

“Policing scholars have identified public confidence in the police as the most important issue facing law enforcement in the community policing era. Police executives have implemented various policies to recover and preserve the relationship with the public, such as education and procedural justice training to build and sustain community trust.

However, the improvement of the public police relationship is still a heavy burden in law enforcement agencies.”
In Barbados the relationship between the police and community has not frayed to the point where that lack of cooperation and support is translated into an inability to bring perpetrators of serious crimes to justice.

In fact, the local crime fighters have boasted one of the region’s highest clearance rates for serious crimes like murders. In a small country like Barbados, such an accomplishment is dependent on an activated community willing to go the extra mile to ensure their safety.
There have been several flare-ups on the island that threaten to disrupt and undermine confidence in the Barbados Police Service (BPS).

No greater evidence of that waning trust was on display in recent days following the decision of High Court Judge Bryan Weekes to award almost $400,000 in damages to attorney-at-law Lani Daisley following her 2012 arrest and charging.

Police constables Hughshone Gamble and Kim-Marie Rock were shown to have conspired and concocted a false story on which to lay charges against the lawyer, who was attempting to speak with her client who was detained by the police at the Bridgetown Port.

Justice Weekes, in his indignant slap down of the police officers’ actions stated: “The court found the actions of the police officers involved in this matter to be completely unacceptable and quite frankly alarming. The transcript of the recording reveals a lack of professionalism and a standard of behaviour which was shocking to the court’s conscience.”

He added: “[Daisley was] subjected to a level of physical and verbal abuse to which no citizen should ever be exposed.”

The Attorney General, against whom the civil suit was brought, along with the Commissioner of Police, did not enter a defence to the civil action.

What has astonished members of the public is the fact that no disciplinary action was brought against the officers.

As Martie Garnes and Shadia Simpson of the Criminal Law Committee of the Barbados Bar Association outlined this week, police officers engaged in breaking the law must be disciplined for their actions, even if it means termination from the BPS.

While Daisley had the resources and competence to pursue her matter to the highest level that the justice system allows, Simpson and Garnes worry that ordinary Barbadians are left unprotected from rogue officers who see themselves as judge, jury and executioner.

It is incidents like these that taint the BPS and make the jobs of those officers who do their work with honour, to face unnecessary hurdles, and an additional layer of violence because of the level of distrust in police officers.