Richard Lord

Po­lice are be­ing giv­en the pow­er to de­tain crim­i­nal sus­pects for five days with­out be­ing charged. This was one of the con­tentious pro­vi­sions of the Bail (Amend­ment) Bill 2010, which was pre­sent­ed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan for de­bate in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day. "The po­lice will now have the pow­er to de­tain for five days if they rea­son­ably sus­pect that you are com­mit­ting a crime," Ram­lo­gan said.

He list­ed some of the of­fences un­der which a sus­pect­ed crim­i­nal can be de­tained for five days with­out be­ing charged: pos­ses­sion of im­i­ta­tion firearms in the pur­suance of any crim­i­nal of­fence; lar­ce­ny of a mo­tor ve­hi­cle; per­vert­ing or de­feat­ing the course of pub­lic jus­tice; re­ceiv­ing stolen goods; manslaugh­ter; shoot­ing or wound­ing with in­tent to do griev­ous bod­i­ly harm; un­law­ful wound­ing; rob­bery with ag­gra­va­tion, rob­bery with vi­o­lence; pos­ses­sion and use of firearm or am­mu­ni­tion with in­tent to en­dan­ger life; pos­ses­sion of firearm or am­mu­ni­tion with­out li­cense, cer­tifi­cate or per­mit; traf­fick­ing dan­ger­ous drugs; sex­u­al in­ter­course with a male and/or fe­male un­der 16; sex­u­al as­sault with an adopt­ed mi­nor and men­tal­ly-sub­nor­mal per­son; and in­cest, kid­nap­ping, rape.

Ram­lo­gan told leg­is­la­tors that rape was on the rise in T&T. "And if we can­not pro­tect our women from the ban­dits and rapists, then some­thing must be wrong with this coun­try," he added.He said those who en­gage in ne­go­ti­at­ing a ran­som for a kid­napped per­son could be ar­rest­ed."If they find you try­ing to ne­go­ti­ate a ran­som, the po­lice will now be able to de­tain you for up to five days," the AG said. "We feel that this law will cre­ate the kind of hold­ing bay to al­low the po­lice to do they job we want them to do." He said the ex­ist­ing 48-hour de­ten­tion with­out charge was in­ad­e­quate for the po­lice to car­ry out the nec­es­sary in­ves­ti­ga­tion in or­der to prof­fer a charge against a sus­pect.

He said the leg­is­la­tion sought to man­date the court against grant­i­ng bail for the spec­i­fied of­fences. Ram­lo­gan said the bill pro­vid­ed for a po­lice of­fi­cer who de­tained a sus­pect to in­form a su­per­in­ten­dent or high­er rank. He added that the high-rank­ing of­fi­cial must then re­view the grounds for de­ten­tion with­in 24 hours on whether the sus­pect should be re­leased or de­tained. Ram­lo­gan al­so said the po­lice could face dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion for abuse un­der the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion, which al­tered the Con­sti­tu­tion and re­quired a spe­cial three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty vote to be­come law. He said se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers must un­der­stand "the con­fi­dence and the awe­some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that we en­list with them in this law." The AG said the po­lice must not "ap­prove and en­dorse a mis­use of this law, but to take an in­de­pen­dent, gen­uine and fair, crit­i­cal analy­sis and look at the per­son's de­ten­tion to en­sure that it was prop­er, law­ful and nec­es­sary."

He then ad­vised se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers that "they must act ra­tio­nal­ly and rea­son­ably, re­spon­si­bly and fair­ly." He said: "Far too of­ten in this coun­try, some of the se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers don't ex­er­cise that in­de­pen­dence of judg­ment, dis­cre­tion and au­thor­i­ty...and this law, while giv­ing them the pow­er to de­prive a cit­i­zen of his lib­er­ty for five days with­out pre­fer­ring a crim­i­nal charge, it is an awe­some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty." He said po­lice of­fi­cers should "ex­er­cise it re­spon­si­bly and fair­ly." Ram­lo­gan then ad­vised: "If se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers ab­di­cate their statu­to­ry du­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to act as an im­por­tant bar­ri­er be­tween the ar­rest­ing and de­tain­ing of­fi­cer and the cit­i­zen...if the su­per­in­ten­dent don't un­der­stand or ab­di­cates his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, I want to make it clear that that may be grounds for dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion." He said po­lice of­fi­cers "are to fight crime, but we want to en­sure that we pro­tect the rights of the in­no­cent cit­i­zens."