Geisha Kow­lessar

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day de­fend­ed the Vir­tu­al Po­lice Of­fi­cer ini­tia­tive, in­sist­ing the in­ten­tion was not to side­line the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty.Grif­fith was re­spond­ing to state­ments made by the au­thor­i­ty, which ex­pressed con­cern about the an­ti-crime mea­sure. In a press re­lease is­sued on Mon­day, the au­thor­i­ty de­scribed it­self as "the on­ly du­ly-con­sti­tut­ed body to deal with com­plaints by cit­i­zens about cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ties by the po­lice."

It added that the au­thor­i­ty is "an in­de­pen­dent body es­tab­lished by law to, among oth­er things, in­ves­ti­gate, mon­i­tor and au­dit com­plaints of al­le­ga­tions of crim­i­nal of­fences in­volv­ing po­lice of­fi­cers, po­lice cor­rup­tion and se­ri­ous po­lice mis­con­duct."Say­ing it ap­peared Grif­fith was "side­step­ping" the au­thor­i­ty, it added that the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter seemed to be trans­fer­ring to him­self a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for which the PCA was specif­i­cal­ly es­tab­lished by the Par­lia­ment.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Grif­fith main­tained that the in­ten­tion be­hind the ini­tia­tive was sim­ply to gath­er in­for­ma­tion and pass it on to the rel­e­vant agen­cies, which could al­so in­clude the au­thor­i­ty. He said the ob­jec­tive was not to cre­ate dishar­mo­ny with any­one or any en­ti­ty."The fact is we need to get the in­for­ma­tion and that has been a chal­lenge," Grif­fith said. "We need to look at the big­ger pic­ture. We are not on­ly seek­ing in­for­ma­tion on rogue po­lice of­fi­cers, but all cat­e­gories of crime, and this in­for­ma­tion is bad­ly lack­ing."

He main­tained his role as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter was to im­ple­ment poli­cies to as­sist all law en­force­ment agen­cies. The is­sue of pub­lic con­fi­dence still re­mained a chal­lenge and as a con­duit to en­sure in­for­ma­tion was giv­en with­out any fear, Grif­fith said cit­i­zens could go to a se­cure Web site and re­port a crime which might be about to be com­mit­ted or has been com­mit­ted.

"We are putting mech­a­nisms to gath­er as much as we can on all crime, be it rogue el­e­ments in the Po­lice Ser­vice or oth­er­wise, and give cit­i­zens re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to be­come vir­tu­al of­fi­cers in cy­ber­space," Grif­fith added.He said there were al­so oth­er av­enues, like Crime Stop­pers, through which mem­bers of the pub­lic could re­lay in­for­ma­tion to the po­lice.