Ask any citizen if they would like to see increased police action against all levels and types of criminals and we can expect an answer in the affirmative. However, if you ask those same persons whether the police, in going after the various types of criminals, should be allowed to act outside of the laws and regulations governing the policemen themselves, then we could expect a more hesitant, and possibly a more cerebral response filled with limiting criteria. And this is essentially what laws are about – limiting the reach of an individual’s powers.
In the recent “caught on tape” verbal confrontation between a policeman and a practising attorney-at-law, ignoring (at least for the moment) the arrogance and invective spewed at the policeman by the lawyer, the issue boils down to whether or not the policeman committed a random stop when he ordered the attorney out of the normal flow of traffic.
That the issue of random stops and searches by the police should once again be a source of public concern is odd given that Justice William Ramlal had ruled since October 2013, that “the police have no power to stop, search, arrest and detain any citizen under Section 17 and/or Section 19 [of the Police Act] unless he has reasonable grounds for suspicion that he will find stolen or prohibited articles or that he has reasonable grounds to suspect that a person whom he reasonably suspected has committed an indictable offence will be found, or that any person has committed a summary or indictable offence in his view or presence or that he has credible and reliable information from someone that a person has committed a summary or indictable offence.”
The effect of the Ramlal ruling is that the police have no authority to whimsically stop and search a vehicle or person. And this ruling in no way should be seen as limiting the policeman in the performance of his statutory duties and obligations, for if that were so, then we will be forced to conclude that the crafters of our laws have done a poor job in conceptualising the rights of individuals as against the methods that the police must adopt to carry out their duties.
And if one were to argue that with the passage of time, and the advancement of technology, and the changes in culture and other factors affecting human behaviour, changes to the Rules of Procedure governing the Guyana Police Force should be made, then, once again, the accusatory finger must be pointed at our legislators for failing to come to grips with the changing times and not giving specific powers to our policemen to act on any whim or fancy that might cross their mind at a particular time.
Because, make no mistake, the power of “random stop and search” does indeed give to the individual policeman the latitude to act on whims, fancies and biases, and to grope in the dark opportunistically, ostensibly looking for a secret crime, but in the end becoming privy to personal secrets of the individual as he conducts a stop and search based on his own personal agenda, and not necessarily premised on preventing or revealing the commission of a criminal act.
Such powers conferred on the policeman, without the attendant obligation to make known to the individual being stopped, the specific reason for being stopped, can lead not only to abuse of power by the police, but can also lead to an escalation in the intensity of such situations and possibly cause normally law abiding persons to run afoul of the law with charges like “obstruction” and inevitably, “resisting arrest.”
But despite the fairly comprehensive ruling by Justice Ramlal in 2013, and several public pronouncements by the GPF itself supporting the idea that the policemen should have “reasonable suspicion” of the commission of an offence, we have seen an admittance by the Minister of Public Security that “random” stops and searches, which are illegal, have netted the GPF about 30 illegal firearms thus far. This brings us back to the original question of how much of their public liberty and privacy are the citizens of this country willing to forego in order to see a reduction in crime? And how successful have the GPF been in tracing those illegal weapons back to their sources and points of entry into this country, and how many other arrests have followed as a consequence of each illegal firearm found during the “illegal” stops and searches.
In Jamaica, in a 2013 ruling, Justice David Batts said, “The request for documents and driver’s licence similarly follow on some existing cause, such as a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been or is about to be committed… [and] …must relate to peculiar characteristics of the persons or the vehicle he is driving, or the manner in which it is operated, or to information received.”
The truth is, that the more time the police force spends conducting “random” stops without “reasonable grounds for suspicion,” the less time the force can spend tracking down, investigating and prosecuting what they usually tell the public are “known criminals.” Wasting resources conducting random “stops and searches” looking to snag “unknown” criminals whilst a seeming plethora of “known criminals” conduct their “business” indicates the lack of a systematic approach to police work.
Having a high level of discipline, motivation and systematic sophistication are some of the things that put law enforcers in a position to gain ascendancy over organised, and individual and opportunistic criminals. Randomness and arbitrary actions should not have a place in an organised and disciplined police force. Protecting and serving the innocent need not come at the expense of the privacy and freedom of the innocent.
Not with a plethora of “known criminals” still plying their trade with such villainous efficacy.
