Crime Chief defends police investigations

Dec 08, 2010 News

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“Evidence gathered is different from evidence presented.”
“There is a difference between evidence gathered and evidence presented.”  That was the initial response from Crime Chief Seelall Persaud to remarks made by Justice William Ramlal, who set free a murder accused, after citing sloppy police investigations.
The recent criticism of the police investigations into a murder by Justice Ramlal is certainly not going down well with the Guyana Police Force. This is not the first time that Justice Ramlal has raised concerns about the poor quality of police investigations in cases presented before him, many of which have led to the acquittal of murder accused.
On Monday, last, the Judge upheld no case submissions by Defence Counsel for Paul Bagot, Huckumchand, and ordered the mixed jury to return a verdict of not guilty.

Bagot was on trial for the murder of his teenage girlfriend Abigail Gittens, who was killed in September 2004.
“We cannot make bread out of stone. We can only work with the evidence before us…It is not the fault of the court if criminals are returning to the streets…The prosecutors cannot do anything about this as well. It all comes down to the investigation done by the police,” the judge is reported as stating.
But the Crime Chief while pointing out that the force takes all comments into consideration, and Justice Ramlal’s is no different, argued that evidence presented does not necessarily mean evidence gathered.
“The prosecutors should know what was presented against what was gathered. It is unfair to blame the police without first knowing what (evidence) was collected,” the Crime Chief told this newspaper.
He said that the (file on the) matter had gone to the Director of Public Prosecutions who had issued the advice to institute the charge.
An integral aspect of the recent murder trial was the death bed statement allegedly made by the victim, in which she called out the first name of the suspect.
During the trial of Bagot, Justice Ramlal did point out that the court was unaware if the police ever made an attempt to obtain a statement from the witnesses present when the victim allegedly made her dying declaration.
He said that the doctor, nurse and security guard present during that time never testified during the Preliminary Inquiry in the Magistrate’s Court, which is led by the police in most cases, because their names were not on the deposition.
These persons the judge said were important to the case, and the police investigators should have known this.
Justice Ramlal also noted that so poor was the police investigation, it could not be ascertained where the victim sustained the fatal wounds as distinct from where she was discovered.
“If this is how crime is going to be solved then we are in a bad state,” Justice Ramlal was quoted as saying in another section of the media.
A senior member of the bar in an invited comment noted that “everybody wants to throw blame”, adding that it is unlikely that the prosecution will have evidence and not present it during a trial.

However, in an apparent defence of the police, the member of the bar stated that “we are in an era far removed from the days when we can get a statement from persons willingly.”
“But the prosecution can only work with what they have. There are times when what you have is enough to convict. It’s no sense throwing blame. The state will learn from its mistakes and the police will learn from its mistakes and we need to correct it.”
From all appearances, these mistakes seem to be recurring, much to the disappointment of the victims’ loved ones.
One former juror is convinced that the police are the ones who are sloppy when it comes to the presentation of evidence during murder trials.
The juror pointed to a recent trial when a policeman who had 19 years’ service in the Guyana Police Force made a mockery of himself and the organization during his cross-examination by a defence attorney.
“When he was asked by the lawyer if he is literate, he said no. To make sure that he understood the question, he was asked again and again he said no. The whole court laughed. That is what is going on in the court. How do we hope to convict guilty persons with these kinds of policemen?” said the former juror.
Another concern is the inexperience of persons in the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).
A former homicide boss told this newspaper that the CID is woefully understaffed and to fill the void, the administration is forced to rely on ranks who have less than two years experience in the Force.
“Most times they have cut-and-dry cases to deal with so there is no pressure on them. If you kill someone they will nail you, but if you kill someone and you are smart, they will have hell,” the former homicide boss stated, adding that the comments made by Justice Ramlal are an embarrassment to the Guyana Police Force.
He said that 90 percent of the time the police charge the right persons, but because of sloppy work these persons walk free.
He recommended that the senior persons in the CID pay more attention to supervising those under them especially when it comes to the more technical cases, since defence attorneys will take advantage of what he called “the sloppiness” of the police.
“We (police) are not perfect but we have been training our detectives constantly. We recently underwent training, which was facilitated by the United States,” Crime Chief Seelall Persaud explained.

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