Protecting the law

It isn’t easy being a cop. Lousy hours, lousy pay. A front-line job, and the butt of all complaints. Worse still, your job description isn’t always clear. The police exist to enforce the law, but often lawyers and learned judges dispute what the law means. How’s your lowly flatfoot supposed to know? And as a cop, you’re always blamed. Crime rises, it’s your fault. Crime falls, it’s because of government policy.

In the last few weeks, our boys in navy have taken a fairly severe, and it would seem well-deserved, bashing. We, the public, have suddenly become concerned about the standard operating procedures in lock-ups, particularly those relating to strip and search. We’ve clamoured for a second independent commission to investigate police abuse of power.

The problem, however, with any investigation of the police is that while most of our civil service is translucent, the RMP is opaque. The need to protect both the force and the general public means that there is some information that the general public just can’t be allowed to know. It could jeopardise investigations, put officers at risk or, worse, bring reprisals onto the heads of civilians who had helped in police investigations.

Nevertheless, there is plenty about the police force that should be made more transparent. Standard operating procedures, where they exist, are one obvious example. Investigations into police abuse of power, generally, also needs to be open to public scrutiny. For the police to do their job, the public need to have confidence in them. And for that to happen, we need to know that they they deserve that confidence.

Following a spate of deaths in police custody in 2003, family members of the (mainly young) men who had died questioned the reliability of official autopsies. The police were upset at this affrontry. Initially, the corpses were released to the families for second opinions (which often varied widely with the initial reports). However, as the bodies began to stack, the bodies were no longer released. Any investigation or inquest had to take the official autopsy as it’s starting point.

Whether there was any abuse of power or not, this is not a move that inspires confidence in the police force.

Towards the end of November, abuse of police power came to public notice once more, with an Abu-Ghraib scenario of a young woman being forced to strip and do ‘ear-squats’, naked. A task obviously set to humiliate. It follows closely on reports lodged by four Chinese nationals of sexual harassment.

An independent commission, headed by a respected former judge, is being established. Unfortunately, information is already being withheld from the public. The ‘ear-squat’ woman has been identified. The woman’s privacy needs to be respected. However, her nationality has become a matter of public interest. It is difficult to see how revealing this would jeopardise investigations. If the police-woman involved has not realised she is under investigation, it does not say much for her own powers of deduction.

The refusal to release these details merely serves to further undermine public confidence in the police. If we are going to protect our police force, we need to stop the rot immediately. We need to open our stations to the glare of public scrutiny, to make them accountable for their actions (and their inactions). Only in this way will we maintain (or re-build) confidence in our police force. And that is the only way it is possible for them to do their job.