Geisha Kow­lessar

The fact that de­tainees are be­ing re­leased from po­lice cus­tody due to lack of ev­i­dence must not be viewed as an in­dict­ment on the Po­lice Ser­vice, says At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan. He al­so has come out in strong de­fence of the An­ti-Gang Act, say­ing there was no need to re­view it.The at­tor­ney gen­er­al al­so sent a stern warn­ing that crim­i­nals must nev­er be glo­ri­fied in the eyes of the pub­lic.He said the Act was passed with unan­i­mous sup­port from the Op­po­si­tion and Gov­ern­ment af­ter a lengthy Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee ses­sion which in­clud­ed ex­pe­ri­enced crim­i­nal at­tor­neys, in­clud­ing for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sub­has Pan­day, Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney and Fitzger­ald Hinds.To date a to­tal of 61 de­tainees have been re­leased.Ram­lo­gan said the re­lease of de­tainees was not a re­flec­tion of the law.He added: "We need to get the ev­i­dence and that is a mat­ter for the po­lice. The best of law can fail with­out prop­er po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion and ev­i­dence."It's a case of whether or not the po­lice has the ev­i­dence."He said some 4,000 peo­ple had been ar­rest­ed by po­lice which rep­re­sent­ed the high­est num­ber of ar­rests in the his­to­ry of the coun­try.

He added: "Less than five per cent of these peo­ple have been freed. The fact that peo­ple are be­ing freed is not an in­dict­ment on the Po­lice Ser­vice.

"Jus­tice, how­ev­er, is not about in­tel­li­gence but law be­ing ap­plied to ad­mis­si­ble ev­i­dence." He said last month T&T record­ed 15 mur­ders.

"Most of these mur­ders were do­mes­tic-re­lat­ed. Checks re­vealed that the last time the coun­try record­ed 15 mur­ders for Sep­tem­ber was a decade ago," Ram­lo­gan said.

Hail­ing the ef­forts of the law en­force­ment bod­ies, Ram­lo­gan said now, more that ever, the po­lice need­ed the sup­port of the gen­er­al pub­lic.

He added: "Our of­fi­cers have risked their lives to pur­sue those who they had rea­son to be­lieve were in­volved in a life of crime.

"I hope, there­fore, that the po­lice will sus­tain the at­tack on crim­i­nal el­e­ments and that the pop­u­la­tion will not be mis­led in­to con­demn­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice for its valiant ef­forts." He said a large num­ber of those who were freed had sev­er­al pend­ing mat­ters be­fore the courts for a range of of­fences, in­clud­ing rape, rob­bery and pos­ses­sion of arms and am­mu­ni­tion.

"We must be care­ful we don't glo­ri­fy crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties and plant ha­los on the heads of some of those who have been freed," he said.

DPP with­in his­right-Is­rael Khan

Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan al­so agreed it was left up to the po­lice to prop­er­ly gath­er ev­i­dence.Khan main­tained there was no flaws in the An­ti-Gang Act.He is part of a high-pow­ered team of lawyers ap­point­ed by Ram­lo­gan to ad­vise the po­lice on le­gal is­sues re­lat­ing to the charg­ing of crim­i­nal of­fences dur­ing the state of emer­gency.He, how­ev­er, agreed that all leg­is­la­tion "can be tight­ened but that does not mean there are flaws in the act He main­tained.He said Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard was "well with­in his right" to dis­con­tin­ue some mat­ters, since they could not be pros­e­cut­ed af­ter Au­gust 15, 2011.He added: "The Act was passed on Au­gust 15, 2011 and short­ly af­ter the state of emer­gency came in­to ef­fect."But it was er­ro­neous for the po­lice to be­lieve that they could charge peo­ple be­fore Au­gust 15."What they could do was ar­rest peo­ple un­der the sched­ule of the An­ti-Gang Act for a range of oth­er of­fence," Khan ex­plained.He said when the high-pow­ered team was ap­point­ed its mem­bers were al­ready faced with sev­er­al of these in­stances where peo­ple would have been charged for of­fences com­mit­ted pri­or to the state of emer­gency."We would have ad­vised that the po­lice go im­me­di­ate­ly to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion. They shouldn't spend one ex­tra day in jail," he said.

Re­view leg­is­la­tion-lawyer

An­oth­er at­tor­ney, Mar­tin George, said the re­lease of de­tainees by the State was a "clear" in­di­ca­tion that the leg­is­la­tion had failed."There is an ur­gent need to look again at the leg­is­la­tion if we want it to achieve re­sults."The leg­is­la­tion has not suc­ceed­ed thus far and we are see­ing the re­sults for our­selves," George said.He said what ap­peared to the biggest flaw was the fact that there con­tin­ued to be lack of ev­i­dence to sus­tain the charges."The dif­fi­cul­ty has been the ev­i­den­tial fac­tor and it seems this is some­thing that is al­ways go­ing to be a dif­fi­cul­ty if the leg­is­la­ture re­mains as is," George said.He said what Gov­ern­ment need­ed to do was ex­am­ine the Unit­ed States leg­is­la­tion as it re­lat­ed to deal­ing with the var­i­ous Los An­ge­les gangs.George was al­so very crit­i­cal of some po­lice­men in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties, say­ing they seemed to be "over ex­u­ber­ant." "What we need was old-fash­ioned polic­ing where gangs are in­fil­trat­ed, based on ev­i­dence and not sus­pi­cion. That's they way the jus­tice sys­tem is sup­posed to work."