I refuse to be­lieve that there are peo­ple who hold high of­fice who pre­fer to leave the pop­u­la­tion in the dark about mat­ters which de­serve ex­pla­na­tion rather than ad­dress le­git­i­mate con­cerns raised as a re­sult of things not go­ing ac­cord­ing to plan. Even worse, I am forced to cringe when I hear bo­gus ex­pla­na­tions and ex­cus­es placed in the pub­lic do­main for con­sump­tion by those who will not dare ques­tion the ac­tions of peo­ple who are held to the most rig­or­ous stan­dards of ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy.The fact that there is a di­min­ish­ing num­ber of voic­es who are pre­pared to chal­lenge the State or to de­mand an­swers to le­git­i­mate ques­tions is a fright­en­ing trend.

And so I open­ly call on all in­di­vid­u­als who are in­de­pen­dent, eth­i­cal and crit­i­cal thinkers to use all avail­able chan­nels to send the mes­sage that a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the cit­i­zen­ry is frus­trat­ed with the overuse and abuse of pub­lic re­la­tions to pull wool over the eyes of the dis­cern­ing pub­lic, al­though ad­mit­ted­ly, the lat­ter is shrink­ing in size.Per­haps the lack of chal­lenge will be viewed by those guilty of the mis­con­duct as ac­cep­tance of their ac­tions or a sign of their high rat­ings on the pop­u­lar­i­ty charts, but such an in­ter­pre­ta­tion could on­ly be giv­en by those who have be­come too ar­ro­gant to ac­cept re­al­i­ty or so cow­ard that they bury their heads in the sand.

Fid­dling with fig­ures

It is be­com­ing very dif­fi­cult to dis­tin­guish fact from fic­tion as those who have ap­point­ed them­selves the of­fi­cial mouth­pieces for the Gov­ern­ment give con­flict­ing in­for­ma­tion when­ev­er con­ten-tious mat­ters arise.It is not ex­pect­ed that any regime will be per­fect, es­pe­cial­ly one which has in­her­it­ed a crime sit­u­a­tion which, de­spite warn­ings to the last gov­ern­ment, was al­lowed to es­ca­late out of con­trol.For ex­am­ple, it is a fact that there is a re­duc­tion in the num­ber of se­ri­ous crimes for the month of Sep­tem­ber and cer­tain­ly since the state of emer­gency (SoE) was de­clared. That should come as no sur­prise be­cause dur­ing an SoE it is ex­pect­ed that there would be greater obe­di­ence to the law.The drop in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty has been de­clared a ma­jor vic­to­ry and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the de­ci­sion to im­pose this dras­tic crime fight­ing mea­sure but has any­one sought to ex­plain the rea­son for the shock­ing­ly low de­tec­tion rate of 18 per cent for the month of Sep­tem­ber?

Per­haps I am to­tal­ly out of or­der to sug­gest that the de­tec­tion rate should have been much high­er dur­ing the SoE, es­pe­cial­ly since there are in­creased re­sources avail­able to fight crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and crim­i­nals should be much eas­i­er to un­earth.But such ra­tio­nal think­ing has no place in a land­scape which pro­motes pro­pa­gan­da and shows lit­tle or no tol­er­ance for in­de­pen­dent minds.I end this par­tic­u­lar point by rais­ing the ques­tion: what mea­sures have been im­ple­ment­ed in re­cent time that will make a fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence in the fight against crime when the SoE is lift­ed?Be­cause if it will be sim­ply a case of busi­ness as usu­al with de­tec­tion rates re­main­ing shame­ful­ly low, then where will we go from there?Like many oth­ers I am not pre­pared to lose the war against crime, so it is bet­ter that we fix the mat­ters now that call for at­ten­tion and stop, with im­me­di­ate ef­fect, the ex­ag­ger­a­tion of our so-called suc­cess.

Walk­ing free

I sup­pose that hav­ing 106 peo­ple charged un­der the An­ti-Gang Act walk free af­ter their mat­ters were dis­con­tin­ued by the DPP is not a mat­ter which calls for ex­pla­na­tion by those re­spon­si­ble for pre­fer­ring the charges.Let me state cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that the DPP is a very knowl­edge­able and com­pe­tent in­di­vid­ual who is well aware that be­fore em­bark­ing on a sum­ma­ry tri­al or a pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry there must be suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to sub­stan­ti­ate the charge.The fact that he ex­er­cised the pow­er to dis­con­tin­ue the mat­ters in cir­cum­stances of in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence against those ac­cused, speaks vol­umes of the in­de­pen­dence and in­tegri­ty of his of­fice.

I there­fore com­mend the po­si­tion tak­en by the DPP and laud his proac­tive ap­proach in in­struct­ing the po­lice to con­sult him be­fore lay­ing charges un­der the An­ti-Gang Act.On the oth­er hand, I beg to dis­agree with the ap­proach tak­en by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice whose ut­ter­ances on the mat­ter sug­gest that we should be more un­der­stand­ing in the giv­en sit­u­a­tion.But when it comes to the de­pri­va­tion of a per­son's free­dom and the de­nial of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, one has to be very care­ful as there is lit­er­al­ly lit­tle, if any, room for er­ror.I hold no brief for those who were charged and even­tu­al­ly freed but I am well aware of the prin­ci­ples of due process, the rules of nat­ur­al jus­tice and the pre­sump­tion of in­no­cence. The avail­abil­i­ty of le­gal re­course does not negate the im­por­tance of get­ting the law right.

Be pre­pared

I am very fa­mil­iar with the chal­lenges in­volved in de­tect­ing gang ac­tiv­i­ty and, more im­por­tant­ly, gath­er­ing the ev­i­dence that will en­sure that charges stick and suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tions re­sult.But I can­not ac­cept the ex­pla­na­tion giv­en that there was lit­tle time for the po­lice to ful­ly un­der­stand the law and the re­quire­ments for a suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu- tion in gang-re­lat­ed mat­ters.The last regime had es­tab­lished a com­mit­tee to deal with an­ti-gang leg­is­la­tion and a bill was draft­ed, ac­com­pa­nied by com­ments and rec­om­men­da­tions for im­ple­men­ta­tion.Very ear­ly in its tenure this Gov­ern­ment an­nounced that sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion would be laid in Par­lia­ment and the de­bate giv­en top pri­or­i­ty. This de­c­la­ra­tion should have prompt­ed those in­volved in law en­force­ment to put their house in or­der and use the re­sources at their dis­pos­al to ad­e­quate­ly pre­pare for the im­pend­ing leg­is­la­tion.

Train­ing of of­fi­cers and the de­vel­op­ment of poli­cies and pro­ce­dures to be fol­lowed when inves- tigat­ing these types of mat­ters should have been ini­ti­at­ed from very ear­ly so that when the An­ti-Gang Act was pro­claimed in Au­gust, po­lice of­fi­cers could have hit the ground run­ning.In the fight against crime there is no hon­ey­moon pe­ri­od and no plea for "grace time" should or could be en­ter­tained, es­pe­cial­ly when the leg­is­la­tion did not creep up like a thief in the night.While the sin­cer­i­ty of apol­o­gy for er­ror is not de­nied, the best show­ing of re­morse would be re­sort to the man­u­als and guide­lines avail­able on­line deal­ing with the best prac­tices in in­ves­ti­gat­ing and pros­e­cut­ing gang-re­lat­ed crime.If any as­sis­tance is re­quired in this re­gard, I will will­ing­ly oblige -at no charge of course.