The head of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) has re­vealed that his or­gan­i­sa­tion has been work­ing with the Po­lice Ser­vice to en­sure rogue cops are brought to jus­tice.

PCA Di­rec­tor David West says the PCA’s re­la­tion­ship with suc­ces­sive Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice has been good and grow­ing even stronger, as a clear­er un­der­stand­ing of the PCA’s role has de­vel­oped.

“We’ve as­sist­ed in a lot of mat­ters, and they help us,” West re­vealed.

He added: “It’s a col­lab­o­ra­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty be­cause they un­der­stand there are rogue el­e­ments in the TTPS, and it’s in their best in­ter­est to get rid of those rogue el­e­ments.”

The PCA boss, who was a guest on to­day’s edi­tion of CNC3's The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme, ad­mits the num­ber of com­plaints filed against po­lice of­fi­cers con­tin­ues to in­crease, de­spite its im­proved re­la­tion­ship and col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Po­lice Ser­vice.

The PCA has closed 144 com­plaints against po­lice of­fi­cers in the first three months of 2024.  How­ev­er, some 700 probes are still on­go­ing.

He ob­served that while at times the pub­lic may be sat­is­fied with the po­lice killing al­leged of­fend­ers, he in­sists in­ves­ti­ga­tions are still re­quired in those in­stances.

“Once you have a break­down in the rule of law, then you have a break­down in so­ci­ety, and then every­thing wouldn’t mat­ter—lives wouldn’t mat­ter,” West as­serts.

The PCA di­rec­tor con­tin­ued: “I tell them, ‘What if it was your child or your hus­band who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and peo­ple were say­ing that about them? How would you feel?”

“So, every po­lice shoot­ing we in­ves­ti­gate—fa­tal and non-fa­tal.”

He as­sures the pub­lic the or­gan­i­sa­tion con­tin­ues to im­prove mea­sures to en­sure in­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­duct­ed with­in a rea­son­able time­frame. 

How­ev­er, he ad­mits that be­cause they re­ly on da­ta from third par­ties—such as foren­sics teams and the health au­thor­i­ties who are car­ry­ing out their own probes—there can be de­lays in PCA probes.

David West al­so en­cour­aged the pub­lic to use the PCA’s in­ter­ac­tive mo­bile app, to send in com­plaints and/or re­ports which need to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed.