For­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, who now heads the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, wants mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers to take the lead in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence is­sues.

Speak­ing at the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny of 61 new­ly mint­ed of­fi­cers at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi lament­ed the trag­ic death of sev­en-year-old McKen­zie Hope Rechia, who was stran­gled in a shack at Pa­lo Seco over the week­end.

Al-Rawi said the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice had many fe­male of­fi­cers skilled to take the lead in com­mu­ni­ty mat­ters.

“Mu­nic­i­pal po­lice has a heavy fe­male pres­ence. Shouldn’t we, there­fore, oc­cu­py the po­si­tion of be­ing the first to in­ter­vene in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence mat­ters? The first to make sure that men and women don’t end up in any dra­ma that leads to death or dif­fi­cul­ty?” Al-Rawi asked.

He added: “We saw the ter­ri­ble sto­ry of a men­tal­ly dis­turbed per­son al­leged to have killed a sev­en-year-old child. Was this known? Can we be a part of en­sur­ing this nev­er hap­pened?”

Say­ing mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers had a tremen­dous amount of pow­er, Al-Rawi said they were part of a team of 30,000 peo­ple, not­ing it cost the tax­pay­ers $35 mil­lion to train and equip this batch of 2022.

Apart from hav­ing all the pow­ers of the reg­u­lar po­lice, Al-Rawi said mu­nic­i­pal of­fi­cers al­so had the pow­er un­der the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion’s Act.

“I passed the amend­ments to the Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Act to al­low some­one to get a pro­tec­tion or­der at mid­night on a Sun­day from a po­lice di­vi­sion. We, the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice, have po­lice sta­tions, we have op­er­a­tion com­mand cen­tres and we have a large co­hort of fe­male of­fi­cers. We will be will­ing to work in that regime,” he said.

Neigh­bours of the child who was killed said they had con­tact­ed the po­lice and oth­er state agen­cies but there was no re­sponse from the au­thor­i­ties.

Al-Rawi said with the train­ing giv­en to the mu­nic­i­pal of­fi­cers, they are now ready to help with law en­force­ment in all com­mu­ni­ties.

Not­ing that crime is the num­ber one is­sue in the coun­try next to the econ­o­my, Al-Rawi urged the of­fi­cers to re­train, re­tool and re-ed­u­cate them­selves.

“The Com­mand Cen­tre is there for you, where you have ac­cess to con­tin­u­ous ed­u­ca­tion, in­clud­ing le­gal ed­u­ca­tion,” he said.

“You have been giv­en a mas­sive amount of pow­er. Ex­er­cise your pow­ers with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. The tax­pay­ers pay for your mis­takes - false im­pris­on­ment, ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion and cor­rup­tion,” he added.

Al-Rawi al­so urged the of­fi­cers to steer clear of cor­rup­tion, bribery and abuse.

“Don’t find your­self in cor­rup­tion. It may be tough times. Some­one will slip a bribe your way, but try your best to re­mem­ber that some­body has passed the law to ex­plain your wealth, track your mon­ey, find all your re­al es­tate and com­put­erise and digi­tise it. My phi­los­o­phy is if I can’t catch you in hard crime I will fol­low the mon­ey,” Al-Rawi said.

He ex­plained that some peo­ple in law en­force­ment had mil­lions in as­sets and no le­git­i­mate ways of show­ing it.

Mean­while, the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary at the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Des­dra Bas­combe al­so urged the grad­u­ates to re­tool and learn new skills.