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The violent attack by a police sergeant on an elderly French woman, reported in our midweek paper last Wednesday, once again brings to the fore the issue the accountability of police behaviour.
The rapid response by the police authorities in arraigning the policeman in court is commendable. Equally praiseworthy is the sterling coverage given to the case by the Public Broadcasting Service, which acted according to the highest standards of a national information service provider. In its wider implications, however, the issue still raises a number of questions.
We are told that soon after the incident, the policeman himself made an official report complaining that the French woman had scratched him. Was this report in any way followed up by the authorities? Was it acted on in any way? And if not, why?
In the absence of any police follow-up in almost a whole month, it would be interesting to know what purpose this report could have served. One interpretation – not necessarily correct, one hastens to add – is that the police sergeant was pre-emptively covering his tracks, by filing a report which could be subsequently produced as justification for his behaviour, in the event of an eye-witness coming forward to report his own act of aggression.
Either way, it seems that little action, if any, would have been taken by the police, were it not for the incident being made public by our sister newspaper.
And yet, this is the second time police action has been under public scrutiny recently, after the fatal shooting of Bastjan Borg in Qormi last month. Borg, who was later revealed to have been suffering from mental illness, was shot five times in the shoulder, chest and forehead after creating a disturbance in public, damaging property, and threatening police officers, as well as passers-by, with a penknife.
On that occasion, the Police Commissioner John Rizzo promptly called a press conference announcing that the police had acted in legitimate self-defence. Nobody, including the media, dared question his appraisal of the sequence of events. But this is surely not the correct way to have police behaviour sanctioned. Certainly the final word should not rest with the police, who must be accountable to a higher body: primarily the law courts, as was the correct approach in the police sergeant incident.
But there should be other strata of accountability, starting with internal enquiry procedures and followed by a truly independent enquiry board, possibly even a parliamentary commission. This will all help maintain trust in the Police Force, which is after all an essential ingredient in the democratic process in the country.
It is a legal maxim recognised in all democratic countries that the law is equally applicable to all people everywhere, including those occupying the most powerful positions in society. Foremost among the nation's potentates are the police, who operate independently and autonomously. This privileged position, however, does not make them above the law: on the contrary, as custodians of the rule of law they ought to be the very examples of correct behaviour. Needless to say, it would be hopelessly idealistic to expect this to always be the case. There are ample cases of policeman smoking during hours of duty, driving without a seat-belt, using their mobiles while supposedly policing neighbourhoods, dissuading citizens from filing complaints against fellow citizens owing to the administrative work load this involves, and generally turning a blind eye when breaches of the law take place.
Even without these examples, it must be said that the old concept of policeman as “a friend of the neighbourhood” has sadly been lost over the years. One way to revive it would be the re-introduction of policemen on the beat: not simply standing like lampposts around a roundabout, but strolling along the streets in touch with the ordinary citizen offering direction and a helping hand.
Recent events have shown conclusively that the police, no differently to any other power bloc in the country, also require a set of procedures to regulate their behaviour, and certainly their abuse of power. As Lord Acton once said: power tends to corrupt§, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It is for this very reason that the police themselves need to be policed. |
