Seven police officers go free. Good one. I bet they will be breathing sighs of relief because their careers and future would have been affected if they had been convicted. The officers will have families who depend on their salary for food, shelter, clothing, school and other things.
We read that the magistrate said, "I am minded to add that the standard of investigation conducted in this case is seriously flawed in that the identification of the properties together with its accurate description was seriously lacking, especially the chain of causation of the recovered items from the individual searches."
Whatever the circumstances , whether the police officers were guilty or not, I hope they will be reinstated so that they can return to normal life. They will have learnt a lesson in this “near miss” case and I bet they will become role models never to do any wrong.
And I commend the magistrate for calling a no case to answer, and for his plea for better standards of investigation.
Allen Lockington is a self-employed customs agent and business consultant who has regular articles published in Fiji. I thank Allen for permission to reprint some of them in this political blog. They remind us that life goes on, whatever the political situation. And it's good to know that.
2 comments:
We, the Fijian Public, expect a high standard from Police Officers. Their Regulations exact this, their Oaths require it and a failure by any Police Officer of his/her duty of care and trust towards the civilians who pay them through taxation is simply unacceptable. In this second decade of the 21st Century, all Police Officers are expected to be SMART (not only in appearance but also in their educational achievements and in their mindset). The right attitude is essential and a failure to observe the demeanour and conduct expected will result in a lack of public trust and their disempowerment as an institution. Let us roundly hope that alleged and recently reported acts of rape by members of the Police are no more than malicious rumour with little or no evidence. We shall expect to see any Police Officer charged with rape in the High Court of Fiji. Increasingly, Crime Prevention Committees will choose to attend the court to ensure that justice is done.
'No case to answer' is bad news no matter how you look at it.
Were the police guilty, but got away with it because of poor standards of prosecution, or through behind the scene manipulation of evidence/witnesses; or was it a false witch hunt in the first place? Sadly all possibilities have to be taken into account in our present situation. The one hopeful sign is that the judiciary had a different opinion to the prosecution, which in the end prevailed.
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