Lawyer decries poor police investigations

Dec 11, 2018 News

Attorney-at-law, Dexter Todd

A lawyer has called for the standards of police investigations to be raised, with many citizens the victims of poor detective work.
Attorney-at-law Dexter Todd was answering questions last week during a press conference calling for the police and the Director of Public Prosecutions to reopen the Marcus Bisram investigations.
Bisram, a US businessman is in a US jail awaiting extradition to Guyana to face a murder charge. Five men in Guyana have already been charged and are to face a High Court trial.
Todd believes that there are other circumstances that warrant further investigations in the case.
The lawyer noted that while there are good, honest police officers, there are others who are more concerned about convictions.
“What you find is that the manner in which the investigations are done, it is geared towards a conviction. That to myself, to my mind, is a recipe for disaster. It is a recipe for corruption. It is a recipe for unfairness.”
The legal counsel said that there is a need for police not to approach investigations by looking at a face but to approach investigations in a fair manner.
“What we have too often, we have police investigators more concerned about the person, and we have to remove ourselves from that. When police investigate a matter, and based on statements prepared, the statement goes for advice, whether it is summary or an indictable manner…it goes for advice.” “
The lawyer noted that it is here that the police files reach a hurdle.
“The advisors – the Police Legal Advisor and the Director of Public Prosecutions – don’t normally come out of the office to do investigations. Rather, they act on a file before them that is presented by police investigators.
“They are allowed to advise as to what is presented to them. They will be clueless to know whether police will have, to some extent, twisted the facts and story in a particular way. They recommend based on what they see.”
That same file when charges are recommended goes to the court.
“The prosecution who has conduct over the matter takes the same file that could have been tainted …the same case is presented to court, and so what we find is if we do not fix the first leg of the investigations, they are going to have serious issues in our criminal justice system in this country.”
The lawyer urged the media to “talk to the courts; to the defence lawyers and the “victims”.
I call them victims, not accused, not defendants.”
According to Todd, he has done numerous matters in which there was absolutely no evidence against a person, where the evidence of the case did not match the person who appeared in court.
These “victims” are advised to take legal advice against the state for all that is gone wrong with their lives in relation to the charge, he said.

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