The Royal Bahamas Police Force is in the spotlight following the recent police custody deaths of Jamie Smith and Aaron Rolle. Neither man died of natural causes. When it comes to discourse about police brutality and cover-ups, it is very easy to discuss the subject in terms of the usual generalisations and popular notions about policing and the Police Force.
That route though is generally unhelpful, as it does not raise the level of thinking about the factors that contribute to how law enforcement around the world and here at home deals with police brutality and police corruption.
With this in mind, this week’s focus will be on three of the most researched and documented of those factors – culture, code and the Commissioner – and their relevance to our 173-year-old Police Force.
Policing is a Culture In Itself
People who join the Force do so for different reasons, and the character and personality of recruits are as varied as those reasons. Some want to do good, and this remains their genuine agenda throughout their time as an officer. Some come to the Force with that mindset, but over time may become disillusioned by what they see and experience, and may in turn and in time become bitter, distrustful or corrupt. And then some come to the Force for the power that comes with being a police officer, fully desirous of using it for their personal advantage.
An officer is not born he is made, and he is made through his training. That training is designed to create in some ways, someone different from the general population from which he came. This by its nature creates a very insular environment in policing, where officers are trained to think differently; to think that they are now the good guys, whose job it is to battle the evil elements of their own society. Suddenly a police officer finds himself in a culture where as an officer, it is “us against them” – and that culture creates the need for officers to be able to lean on and rely on persons who share and live that mindset every day.
The persons who share this mindset are other officers, and this bond fosters a deep sense of loyalty in the ranks. An officer has to be able to trust another officer to have his back in the trenches. This loyalty, officers may tell you, is absolutely essential to be able to carry out the rigors of law enforcement, because officers must be in an environment where they can trust their fellow “soldiers”.
The problem for all uniformed organisations around the world is when this trust and loyalty morphs into a misguided code that creates and then nourishes the breeding ground for unchecked misconduct by police officers.
The Code of Silence
“The cruelest lies are often told in silence” – Robert Louis Stevenson. The code of silence as it is widely termed, is something uniformed branches around the world have in varying degrees. Any officer who says otherwise is probably lying, the lie itself being a part of the code of silence that exists in his or her organization.
The code of silence is generally defined as the unwillingness of officers to report on the misconduct of other officers – and this code is not confined to the job itself. Some officers for example, are unable to leave “policing” at work, and as such go home and are physically abusive to their wives, girlfriends and children.
Because officers have each other’s back, the code of silence can carry over into protecting each other in domestic disputes since the home front for officers is sacred terrain. This is why women who are being abused by police officers often have the least chance compared to other abused women of getting justice, because officers will resist reporting on the crime of another officer. On the job, this code can result in all categories of unrestrained misconduct.
In addition to promoting this misconduct, the code of silence also prevents police officers from becoming good or better officers, despite its general intent being to “help” one another. This is because if officers are shielded from reprimand when they are doing things that are wrong, they are not likely to learn to do what is right.
Officers are given by law, the authority to employ various measures, including the use of force, in policing. For the Central Detective Unit (where many of the police brutality claims emanate) officers are trained to use various techniques to get a person in custody to cooperate and provide the information they are seeking. Every investigator develops an interrogation style. For some officers that style is brute force.
Now, since the law gives an officer fairly broad discretion in methods of law enforcement, a code of silence in an organization works against efforts that may exist to run a “clean” Force, because human nature is to do whatever one can get away with. Human nature is also to choose the path of least effort and resistance in carrying out a task. It is easier to use your fist than your brain.
So, if an officer feels the easiest way to get cooperation from someone is to brutalise the person, and that officer knows that his colleagues will not rat him out, he will continue his misconduct. He will have no incentive to improve his policing skills and since he is not being disciplined, he becomes a lazy officer, especially at the CDU level.
In the city of Chicago, Illinois, a US city now charting record murder rates, police corruption is enabled by a “blue code of silence” entrenched in a department culture where officers avoid reporting crimes and misconduct by their colleagues, according to “Crime, Corruption and Cover-ups in the Chicago Police Department”; a 2013 report issued by the University of Illinois at Chicago.
While acknowledging that the vast majority of the Chicago Police Force’s officers are law-abiding and dedicated public servants, the report points out that police corruption in Chicago survives “due to a lack of oversight and indifference from internal and external leadership.”
I cited this report both for its recommendations to combat the code of silence, and for its focus on the critical element in any law enforcement agency – leadership.
The Commissioner of Police
The law gives police officers the power to strip people of their liberty and even their life. For this reason, it is critical that the Bahamian people have confidence that those powers are not abused. It is the Commissioner of Police who is charged with the duty of guarding the public and the Force against such abuses.
In the recent deaths of Smith and Rolle, Commissioner of Police Ellison Greenslade has done himself, the public and the Police Force a disservice by the way he has chosen to handle these cases. Smith died of asphyxia (lack of oxygen) and Rolle of blunt force trauma that ruptured his intestines.
He has done this disservice by leading the country to believe that his only mandatory option was to send these cases to the Coroner’s Court. This however is not true. The Commissioner of Police was and is now, fully able to put all officers who dealt with these two men, as well as the officers in charge at the time of the deaths, before the courts with appropriate charge(s).
Commissioners before Mr. Greenslade have done the same thing with their officers when persons died in police custody. The killing of Desmond Key is the most recent example of a Commissioner of Police, in this case Paul Farquharson, putting officers before the courts for the beating and subsequent death of someone in their custody. An officer was ultimately convicted of manslaughter in the beating death of Mr. Key and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
The Coroner cannot rule on the guilt or innocence of any of the officers who Commissioner Greenslade will submit to her for an inquest. All the Coroner can do is make a finding on who died, when, by what cause and which officers may have had contact with the deceased – information the Force already has. The Coroner would also make certain recommendations to the Commissioner based on the inquest’s findings.
The deaths happened in police custody. The Force is carrying out the investigations. So the logical question is – what does the Coroner need to tell the Commissioner that he does not already know, especially since it is the Commissioner who oversees what information the Force gives her in the first place?
In a criminal case, unless a Voluntary Bill of Indictment is filed by the prosecution, an inquiry has to be held before the case goes to trial. So a Coroner’s Inquest is not providing these officers the opportunity for an inquiry that they otherwise would not get – they would get that prior to a potential trial before the Supreme Court.
The Commissioner’s decision not to charge the officers involved, as has been done by predecessors, speaks to leadership on the Force. What also speaks to leadership is that the Commissioner did not immediately address the public on these matters. His recent comments came about only after the media approached him at services for retired commissioner BK Bonamy. When two men in 24 hours die in police custody and the head of the Force is silent, it fuels distrust of the Force.
No Commissioner wants his integrity or that of the Force he directs to be questioned – that is entirely understood. No man of course though, is above being questioned and when in a leadership position this is especially the case. Such questioning is often portrayed and condemned as an attack, usually to shut down the questioning. This usually works, but it is the public who suffers loss.
The public has enough sense to know that having some bad apples does not mean all the apples are bad. That is not the problem most right-thinking Bahamians have. The problem is when we do not believe that the Force will say wrong has happened when it has happened, and will deal with that wrong expeditiously and transparently.
We know police brutality happens in our country. Every prime minister knows it. Every Commissioner knows it. Officers know it. Bahamians know it. There is no need to insult common knowledge because of fear that one’s tenure as Commissioner could be tarnished, or fear that the public will lose faith in all officers because of the proven misconduct of a few.
Sensible Bahamians, myself included know the Commissioner cannot prevent every act of misconduct by officers. Sensible Bahamians also know that an act of misconduct by an officer does not automatically translate into the Commissioner himself being corrupt. But what Bahamians ought to have regardless of their sensibilities, is the confidence that police misconduct and the loss or taking of a life in police custody will not simply become a statistic.
Independent Commissions
Governments around the world have recognized the challenges that exist in trying to rely on the police force to police itself. When you combine the honor of the badge, codes of silence and differing leadership styles and abilities, it becomes clear that police forces are not good at policing themselves. This is where governments step in to legislate ways to help protect the public and the police force.
England and Wales established an Independent Police Complaints Commission in 2004 through an Act of Parliament to investigate the most serious complaints and allegations of misconduct against the police. In the Chicago report cited earlier, the recommendation was the establishment of a democratically elected civilian Police Board. An independent body here at home would likely replace the Force’s Complaints and Corruption Unit.
In the midst of political jousting over the years there have been calls for independent inquiries into the conduct of police officers, but since none of those calls were ever accompanied by actual proposals on the legislative establishment of an independent commission, one is left to wonder how serious those calls were.
The Bahamas is a small country – everybody knows everybody. And because of the realities we all know exist on the Force, many Bahamians do not have confidence in the Force to police and investigate itself. It is a conclusion entire nations have come to about their law enforcement bodies.
I believe government would do well to research relevant commissions and boards throughout the Commonwealth and the region, and to determine how close we can come to legislating and properly funding a truly independent body to investigate police misconduct.
Perhaps that way we can begin to help the Force to help itself, and help the public to have confidence in those we hire to serve and protect, most of whom are worthy of praise for their bravery, dedication and service.
Tribune Column by Sharon Turner
