The perils of faulty investigation

Feb 09, 2013 Editorial

There was a time when it took ages for anything to be reported. The system that operated was tedious by any standards but of course, when they are all that people knew then they were taken for granted. The advent of the internet and the plethora of smart phones make just about everything a heartbeat from the media.
In the not too distant past, perhaps about fifteen years ago, a situation would have warranted a photographer with a roll of film. This film would then have to be sent to a special laboratory to be developed and eventually made available to the newspapers or to the entity that required the information.
This was time consuming to the point that if something happened in a location along coastal Guyana, it was sometime before there could be photographic evidence because the photographer had to return to a location where a laboratory existed.
If the incident occurred in a remote area it could be weeks before the photographic evidence could be provided. Today, man has evolved to the point where almost instantaneously he can transmit his photographs just about any part of the country. He no longer needs a laboratory. In fact, just about anyone with a phone is a cameraman.
When Saddam Hussein was executed although the execution was supposed to be a private event, images were circulated to just about every corner of the world to the extent that some children emulated what they saw with disastrous consequences.
The police have made arrests because someone with a camera phone recorded activities that highlighted something that certain people would have wanted to hide. In fact, some of the best photographs were those taken and rushed across the world in the blink of an eye.
Today, many people are often reluctant to do some things in public because of the ready cameras. And so we come to a situation that must be providing nightmares for the local police. There was a crash on the roadways involving a large sports utility vehicle and a minibus. Two people died. A young man has been charged but someone has come up with photographic evidence that the wrong person may be facing the courts.
From early reports, a 17-year-old who was under the influence of alcohol was piloting the sports utility vehicle at the time of the collision. He was taken to hospital and tested for blood alcohol. The tests concluded that he had exceeded the legal drinking limit. But this also raises other questions. The legal drinking age is eighteen. This meant that the police had two offences on their hands. It is illegal to sell alcohol to a minor.
Strange as this may seem, the police never sought to ascertain the source of the alcohol, thus reinforcing that view that they are often not too interested in enforcing the laws. Perhaps the investigating rank was consumed by the death of two people and therefore concluded that the sale of alcohol to a minor was indeed a minor episode.
There were charges against the person whom the police concluded was driving the vehicle. Now we are hearing otherwise. And this is due to the technology that abounds.
Someone at the scene of the accident appears to have taken photographs that reveal that someone else was the driver. The photographs appear to have been taken almost immediately after the accident and they show a person even younger than the one charged.
A number of things immediately spring to mind. There were media reports which stated that a seventeen-year-old was the driver at the time of the accident. One can assume that the person who took the photographs might have concluded that the driver might have been seventeen. Then came the photograph of the person who has been charged and suddenly there are photographs to suggest that the wrong person is facing the courts.
If this is the case then there should be other criminal charges against the person charged. Further, one must wonder at the quality of the police investigation at the scene of the accident.
Suffice it to say that the charge against the teen may not stick but then again, if he confesses to a crime that he did not commit he is one very brave schoolboy.

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The perils of faulty investigation

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