Lawyer: The Police are obliged to respond

22.AUG.08

Editor: It would have been better for the image of the Police Service and Mr. Miller’s own image if he had not castigated Mrs. Morris-Cummings and blamed her failure to report the matter of the person “scoping” her office to the police for not preventing the murder of our late colleague Bertram Stapleton, Esq.{{more}} taking into consideration the Force’s poor success rate in bringing murderers in high profile cases to justice; I leave it to the public to ponder on how much difference it would have made if Mrs. Morris-Cummings had made a formal report to the police. It is not unlikely that she would have been given similar responses to those the Commissioner delivered to Mr. Jomo Thomas when he sought to find out who had assaulted Ipa. Of greater importance however is what those who heard or read the Commissioner’s remarks have been led to think.

The duty of the police is ‘to protect and serve’ all of us who live on St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Earlier this year when the Princess Line cruise ship was expected to arrive in Port Kingstown and he was cleaning up the city, Mr. Miller emphasized “to protect and serve” as the raison d’etre of the police in responding to those who questioned his motives for taking vagrants off the streets. Given his declared understanding of what is required of him, the Commissioner must at all times carry out this duty without fear or favour and untroubled by any other considerations. The duty obliges the police to respond to and act when they get information of criminal conduct even if it was not reported to them directly. It is my respectful view that it does not matter by what means the police come into possession of information that could lead to the prevention and/or detection of criminal conduct. The more serious the criminal conduct which could result, the more serious and urgent should be the response of the police in all such cases. Often the information would be of a nature that it may lead to nothing, but that should not prevent them from taking it seriously and acting on it. In the minority of cases prompt action may prevent murder (as in Stapleton’s case) or other serious crimes from being committed.

There is no doubt that from the Commissioner’s statements which were reported in the Searchlight of the 31st July last he had read or been told what Mrs. Morris-Cummings had said and interpreted her omission to say it to the police as well as “irresponsible”.

The Commissioner is reported to have said that had Mrs. Morris-Cummings reported the matter to the police Mr. Stapleton’s death could have been avoided. Did he mean by this that it was Mrs. Morris-Cummings “irresponsible” conduct which led to Mr. Stapleton’s death? One hopes that he does not, for a commissioner of police who is “protect and serve” driven and whose mind is uncluttered by other considerations would have made it his duty to act on the information in the press and carried out that duty faithfully and diligently. He would have reached Mrs. Morris-Cummings and said to her that she had made an unfortunate mistake; that the police had nothing to do with “scoping” her and invited her to join with him in getting to the bottom of what she had reported to the press. He would have done all this instead of being so quick to label Mrs. Morris-Cummings as irresponsible.

An example from insurance law may help to illustrate the point I am making. An insurer who first hears from the police the facts of an accident in which his insured suffered loss cannot later avoid a claim arising out of that accident, brought by the insured on the ground that the insured himself did not report the accident to him. The courts have held that what really matters is that the insurer has knowledge of the accident and not the source from which the information reaches him.

Has the Commissioner stopped to think that, by his own reasoning, he could have prevented our colleague’s death? If he had sought “to protect” Mrs. Morris-Cummings, as least by interviewing her and taking a statement from her immediately what she told the press was reported to him it may have put her at ease and provided him with very useful information. It seems to me that the Commissioner having failed to speak with Mrs. Morris-Cummings he too, by his own standards, cannot escape being described as irresponsible.

Bertram E. Commissiong, Q.C.