On Tuesday May 23rd, 2023, there took
place in the Anguilla House of Assembly a debate on a Motion to establish a
Select Committee to address and understand the rise of violence in our
community. Ministers of Government
making their contribution to the debate unanimously regretted the recent
increase in violence in our community and urged the taking of action to deal
with the issue. The Opposition members
of the House joined in voting with the Government. A Select Committee was unanimously
established. Everyone left the Meeting
feeling very satisfied at a job well done.
Later that same day, four or five of
the members of Government retired to one of our premier local restaurants to
enjoy a well-earned lunch and refreshments.
Two of them were women.
Towards the end of their lunch break,
a large male citizen approached the Ministers in an aggressive manner and began
to upbraid one of the male Ministers over some incident that had occurred
earlier between the two of them. At some
point after his approach, someone began filming the incident with their cell
phone. The entire video of the incident was
subsequently circulated on the internet.
I doubt that there is an adult in Anguilla who has not seen this
video. It makes for riveting and
unforgettable viewing.
In the video, the two lady Ministers
repeatedly implore the citizen to leave the restaurant and not to interfere
with them. The citizen appears to start
to leave, only to turn around and approach them again, all the time yelling at
them at the top of his voice. In his
haranguing of the Ministers, the citizen appears to have touched or tapped one
of the males. He did not utter any
threats to the women or to the males. So,
he does not appear to strike any of them.
But his conduct appears to me to have been provocative and abusive.
In the video, one of the female
Ministers, after some minutes of this offensive behaviour by the citizen, begins
to scream at him some of the foulest language imaginable. There is no apparent logical reason for her
reaction. She appears to have completely
lost her temper. She picks up a heavy,
wooden restaurant chair and approaches the citizen, yelling obscenities and
threats to his life, ultimately striking him with the chair. She can be heard repeatedly yelling at the
citizen that she is going to kill him.
The other female Minister joins in
shouting at the citizen, adding her reproaches, and imploring
him to leave. One of the male Ministers,
the one earlier tapped by the citizen, sits calmly typing at his phone, with
his back to the altercation. He turns
around once or twice to add his words of reproach to the citizen, but he does
not threateningly approach him, nor does he touch him. Another male member of Government appears
briefly towards the end of the video ushering the citizen out of the
restaurant. After some more verbal
confrontation, the citizen leaves. He
does not complain that he has been injured nor does he show any visible sign of
injury as he leaves.
A few hours later, a photograph of
the citizen was widely circulated on the internet showing him with his arm in a
sling and a heavily bandaged finger. He
seems to be indicating that one of his fingers was broken, presumably by the
chair striking him.
Someone important appears to have
made a complaint against the citizen to the police because, allegedly, the
citizen was immediately apprehended and taken to the Police Station for
questioning. According to the citizen,
he was subsequently released from custody, without charges being brought
against him. There is no evidence that
the female politician who struck him was either arrested, or taken to the
Police Station, or even invited to make a police statement. From all reports she was certainly not
charged with any offence.
I do not believe it is an
exaggeration to say that the community was shocked and horrified at the violent
act and language shown by the female Minister.
We awaited the expected immediate and firm disciplinary action of the
Premier. Surely, on seeing the video he
would immediately ask the Minister to resign her portfolios for conduct
unbecoming. If the Minister had any
honour, she would not, in my opinion, await this action by the Premier. She would immediately publish an apology to
the citizen, to the Premier and to all of Anguilla for letting us down so
badly. She would then do the honourable
thing and offer her resignation to the Premier.
She did nothing of the sort. Nor
did the Premier announce any disciplinary action against his Minister. They both merely regretted what had happened.
Several days later, after various
radio pundits complained publicly and repeatedly about the lack of any action, and
dozens of mocking memes were widely circulated on the internet, the Premier acted. He explained on radio that he understood the
police were investigating the incident.
He stated that he must await their Report before deciding on the
appropriate action to take. The
community was left stunned.
The Premier has repeatedly stated since
then, when asked by members of the public what action he is going to take, that
he is obliged to await the results of the police investigation. In my opinion, that is not an appropriate
reaction by a head of Government to such violently unacceptable behaviour by
one of his Ministers. The
dissatisfaction spreading through the community is palpable. It is a political disaster for the Premier
and his administration.
Why is the Premier’s reaction to his
Minister’s violent behaviour so unacceptable?
First, under our system of law, the Premier
is wrong to state that he is awaiting the outcome of any police
investigation. The police are not
supposed to share their Report, or the details of their investigation, with any
member of the public, especially a politician who is deciding what political
action is appropriate for him to take.
This is so whether the politician in question is the head of Government
or not.
Neither the Premier nor any other
politician is the Minister for the Police.
The Governor and the courts are the only persons the Commissioner of
Police is answerable to. A Governor
might expect the police to report their findings on an incident to her, but it
is not automatic. The informal National
Security Council (of which the Premier is a member) established recently by the
previous Governor might reasonably expect a Report to be shared with them, but
not the details of the police investigation.
The Police Commissioner takes an oath
to perform his duties independently of the Government and not to take
sides. His loyalty is to the law and the
court system, not the Government. The
citizens expect him to be vigorously independent of all political
affiliations. He has not always been so,
as we have seen from the actions of previous Police Commissioners. But, whenever he allows his office to be used
to promote the agenda of a government, or any other objective besides law
enforcement, we rightly view it as a form of corruption.
When there is evidence that a crime
has been committed, the police carry out their investigation with a view to
helping the prosecution decide how to proceed. They do not share that Report with anyone else
but the Attorney General, the non-political head of our prosecutorial
office. It has been said that the police
are there to collect information on criminal offences from the public, not to
share that information with the public.
The Premier is quite wrong to expect
that the Commissioner of Police will share the result of any police
investigation with him to enable him to take any political action. The fact that the Commissioner may do so in
this or any other case is irrelevant.
In my opinion, the Commissioner would be acting quite improperly were he
to do so.
The various offences that may have
been committed here include both felonies, as they used to be called, and
misdemeanours. Some of the offences that
may have been committed by the Minister in this case, such as assault
occasioning actual bodily harm, may be charged either indictably or
summarily. That is, they may be brought
before a judge and jury, or they may be brought before a Magistrate. In Anguilla, most criminal offences (generally,
save only for murder, manslaughter, burglary, and rape) are hybrid
offences. That means that the
prosecution must decide which court is the more appropriate to being the charge
in. They could choose one or the other.
One of the reasons why, in our West
Indian system, it is quite wrong for the police to share the result of their
investigations with any member of the public, is the fear of influencing
members of the public who may be summoned to sit on the Jury which will try any
indictable offence with which an accused person is charged.
In the case of a professional
Magistrate by contrast, no such fear arises.
He can be assumed to know how to ignore any evidence he hears outside
the court room, and to decide the case solely based on the evidence adduced
before him in his courtroom.
In the Anguillian context, it is
nearly inconceivable that a Minister of Government committing an assault, such
as appears may have occurred here, would be charged with an indictable
offence. The injury was relatively minor
and may be said to have been provoked by the victim himself. It is almost certain that, if the prosecution
were to decide to bring a case here, they would bring it in the Magistrate’s
Court. But that is not the point. The police cannot pre-judge the prosecutorial
discretion of the Attorney General’s office and decide that there is no harm in
risking making their investigations public since the case will be tried by a
professional Magistrate. Any possible
charges for the offences of using obscene and threatening language in a public
place are entirely triable in a Magistrate’s Court.
We don’t know who the Commissioner of
Police will share the outcome of his investigation with. He may do the right thing and refuse to share
it with the Premier or anyone other than the A-G. But he may weaken and give in to the
Premier’s demand that he see it.
What I can say from my experience is
that in any other Caribbean Country, the police, sharing their Report on an
investigation with a member of the public, would be called out by any judge in
charge of a subsequent trial of the offence in question. The Judge would accuse the Commissioner of
attempting to corrupt or prejudice the trial.
The judge might even declare a mistrial and dismiss the charges on the
basis that no reasonable jury could be expected to forget the details of the police
Report previously shared with them, so that any trial would be compromised. The Commissioner of Police would be summoned
before the Court and would be severely reprimanded by the Judge. The Judge could warn him that any repetition
of such conduct would be followed by his recommending that the police officer
in question by charged with an offence of obstructing the course of justice. Or he could decide to impose a fine on the
spot.
There is a second reason why, in our
Caribbean system, the police would be wrong to share the results of their
investigations with any member of the public, including a Premier. We are very small communities where everyone
knows everyone else. Yet, we expect
members of the public to share information with the police who are investigating
a report of a crime. A member of the
public, who is known to have reported their knowledge of facts surrounding an
offence, is at risk not only of injury.
He is at risk of losing his friends and his reputation in the
community. It is essential that no one,
including a Premier, knows what the police have found out from him about any
alleged offence.
It is already difficult for the Anguillian
police to get witnesses to give information.
It is already a joke in the community that some police officers are so
incompetent as to approach a suspect seeking an explanation for some incident with
the words, “So and so told me that you did such and such. What do you have to say?” Public confidence in the police force is
immediately and fatally lost. No member
of the public would be so stupid to report any crime they have seen to the
police again. Such an approach is so
unprofessional as to be almost criminal.
The police officer needs firing.
It is essential, for the police to secure the confidence of the public,
that they never disclose to any unauthorised person what they know about the
commission of a crime. Not only is this
a sacred rule of police work, but it is also an obvious safeguard to guarantee
the safety of members of the community who may be cooperating with the them.
Even if the Premier were to be given
a copy of any police investigation into the incident, he could protest that he must
await the outcome of any prosecution. It
may take years for any prosecution to be brought. At the end of any trial, the Minister might
be acquitted on the basis that the wrong charge was brought, or some other
technical reason. What does a police
investigation or a criminal trial have to do with the leader of Government
demanding the highest standards of conduct of his Ministers? The answer is, there is no connection
whatsoever.
How does the trial of a criminal
complaint relate to conduct which is unbecoming and unacceptable? The Premier is not being asked to act because
the Minister committed a criminal offence, but because her conduct was
unacceptable and unbecoming. If he were
allowed to use the excuse of the lack of a conviction, he could delay acting
until his administration’s term runs out in 2025. That cannot be right. He promised us a new type of government if
elected. We thought he meant it. That is why we elected him and the members of
his party. We are entitled to be
disappointed in him and in them.
The present ARP administration holds
power by the slimmest of margins, a 6 to 5 majority in the House of
Assembly. All six members of the
governing party hold executive office in the Government of Anguilla. There are no back benchers whom the Premier
can call on to fill any vacancy in his administration. The loss of even one member of his administration
to the Opposition benches would mean that the Government would no longer have a
majority and might not be able to pass any legislation. Consequently, the Government would eventually
fall. It is in the Premier’s interest to
keep all members of his administration happy.
It is seems to me that the Premier’s
reluctance to call out and discipline his lady Minister most probably is not
based on any imagined principle of the need to await the police Report. It is based more likely on his preference to
hold on to power and not to risk the Governor dissolving the House
prematurely. We may describe that as the
worst kind of political expedience, and quite dishonourable conduct in a
Premier.
