It’s dis­ap­point­ing and dis­con­cert­ing that in this pe­ri­od of high crime, a to­tal of 12 po­lice of­fi­cers in two sets of charges have been freed by the courts, not on the ba­sis of be­ing found in­no­cent of the al­le­ga­tions, but rather be­cause of a fail­ure of the pros­e­cut­ing teams to pro­vide the courts with suf­fi­cient and co­gent ev­i­dence against the of­fi­cers.

In one of the in­stances, five of­fi­cers of the North­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force were charged with ex­tor­tion, so­lic­it­ing $30,000 and five pounds of mar­i­jua­na from a cou­ple af­ter a search of their home.

In the oth­er mat­ter, sev­en po­lice of­fi­cers were charged for al­leged­ly seiz­ing cash from a busi­ness es­tab­lish­ment in San­gre Grande; a video is sup­posed to have shown the of­fi­cers in the act.

In both in­stances, the courts, faced with what was con­sid­ered to be the lack of suf­fi­cient qual­i­ty ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed by the pros­e­cut­ing teams, dis­missed the cas­es and freed the of­fi­cers. It is not a mat­ter of seek­ing to per­se­cute the of­fi­cers af­ter they were freed, but rather it’s an in­stance of the dis­played in­ca­pac­i­ty of the pros­e­cut­ing team to se­cure the ev­i­dence re­quired for the mat­ters to be pro­ceed­ed with.

As we have re­port­ed on these mat­ters, the pros­e­cu­tion did not pro­duce the ev­i­dence re­quired notwith­stand­ing the ex­tra time giv­en by the courts.

There are al­so ques­tions to be an­swered giv­en the re­quired and/or the usu­al pro­ce­dure adopt­ed that be­fore charges can be brought in se­ri­ous mat­ters, such as the above, the po­lice will have to get the go-ahead to pros­e­cute hav­ing pre­sent­ed the ev­i­dence to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

As far as we are aware, that pro­ce­dure was fol­lowed. So sure­ly, there is a need for clar­i­ty on what went on in the two in­stances.

With re­spect to the dis­pos­al of the cas­es on the ba­sis of the rul­ings by the courts, so un­ac­cept­able the sit­u­a­tion seems that Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has open­ly ad­mit­ted, whether in jest or not, to be­ing shocked about the fail­ure of the pros­e­cu­tors to bring the hard ev­i­dence to the court for a de­ci­sion to be made.

Al­so shar­ing sim­i­lar con­cerns is the Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, an ex­pe­ri­enced at­tor­ney in such mat­ters, MP Kei­th Scot­land.

Ac­cord­ing to what was said to re­porters about what is to hap­pen now to at least al­low the ev­i­dence to be dis­closed in court, there is room for an ap­peal and/or to re­in­state the charges against the of­fi­cers.

The re­al­ly dis­turb­ing out­come of these cas­es is the like­ly dent it will make in the pub­lic’s con­fi­dence in the ca­pac­i­ty of pros­e­cut­ing of­fi­cers to gath­er qual­i­ty ev­i­dence to bring be­fore the court. The cas­es al­so raise con­cerns about whether the po­lice were seek­ing to pro­tect their own from pros­e­cu­tion and can re­sult in fur­ther di­min­ish­ing of pub­lic trust in the po­lice ser­vice to deal in a fair, dili­gent and pro­fes­sion­al man­ner when their own are in­volved in al­leged crimes.

These are sure­ly not mat­ters that can be left with­out fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion and even­tu­al full pros­e­cu­tion if war­rant­ed.