Police use of force should not trample citizens' rights

One of the most distinguished Caribbean jurists was the late Justice Telford Georges, with whom I shared a close relationship. He served as a judge in many countries, including Trinidad and Tobago, the Cayman Islands, Belize and Bermuda, on the Privy Council and as Chief Justice of The Bahamas, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. He was in Zimbabwe, when, on the morning of my wedding, I received a telegram from him, stating, 'You could not have chosen a better star.' He and my husband were Capricorn men, with successive birthdays, which they celebrated together whenever the judge was here for Christmas. I am eternally grateful for the privilege to attend and speak at his very private funeral. Although he left us 21 years ago, I still miss our chats. His many speeches, delivered over a generation ago, provide solutions to problems we are facing today. In December 1991, in a speech delivered to the Trinidad and Tobago Bar and reproduced in the book Telford Georges—A Legal Odyssey (written by professors Albert K Fiadjoe and Gilbert Kodilinye and his widow, Joyce Cole Georges), the learned judge spoke these words: 'There is no reason to think that tampering with the fundamental rights will result in better detection of crime, more frequent arrest of wrongdoers and speedier convictions. Press reports indicate that in many countries where the police are able to eliminate persons considered to be guilty without the entanglements of law and proper trial, citizens do not enjoy a greater sense of personal safety. Police feel as beleaguered as they do here, and often more so. 'We are aware of 'shoot-outs' between the police and suspected criminals in which the criminal is killed. There are often lurking doubts whether it may have been necessary to shoot to kill. The criminals are well aware that this is a distinct possibility. It does not seem to affect their pattern of behaviour. If there could be near certainty that weakening the fabric of protective rights would result in less crime and a greater sense of personal safety, the arguments could demand consideration. In the absence of such certainty, it should be dismissed out of hand. 'The only course is to insist on the effective application of the protective rights. If law enforcement divests itself of the moral justification and legal propriety with which it is clothed when acting within the constraints imposed by the due application of fundamental rights and freedom, then it becomes merely another instrument for the application of force for the attainment of a given, and the end ceases to be praiseworthy by reasons of the means employed to achieve it; and the fabric of society is torn apart. 'A great responsibility rests on the members of the legal profession who assist in the administration of justice in the courts, and on the judges who dispense it, to ensure that the fundamental rights and freedoms are kept in the forefront of their minds and applied with conscientiousness.' A word to the wise is sufficient. The view that the police do not have much respect for life and limb is not without foundation. One night, it came close to home. I was in my study at midnight, when I observed the bonnet of my neighbour's car was raised. Knowing she was abroad, I immediately alerted my husband, who contacted a member of the protective services, who lived next to that neighbour. We also called the police. The neighbour came with his licensed firearm and fired a shot in the air. The intruder executed a high jump over the fence. It could have earned him an Olympic medal. When the police came, we related what had transpired, and were shocked when the police asked the man who had fired the warning shot, 'Why you fire in the air? Why you din shoot the man?' As a former board member of the Police Complaints Authority, under Justice Jim Davis, I can attest that we were always concerned about police-involved killings. The PCA tried then, and continues to try its best, to change the mindset of the police from being a police force to a police service. With the right leadership, it is not an unattainable goal. Hazel Thompson-Ahye former independent senator