November 17, 2006

CRIMINAL BATTLED POLICE OFFICER FOR GUN IN CROWDED STREET

 A plainclothes police officer brandishing a gun grappled with an escaped remand prisoner near the SMB supermarket last Friday afternoon in full view of shoppers and passers-by.

Shoppers stood in shock and horror as the plain clothes police officer was overpowered by the culprit who grabbed the gun from him while throwing him to the ground. But the officer quickly recovered his composure and managed to claim his gun back but in the process lost his prey who ran up the street towards the taxi rank. Then the officer, according to passers-by,  did something which horrified and shocked everyone. He took aim and fired a shot at the fleeing criminal even though the street was crowded with men, women and children. One lady with a small child was so shocked and angry by what she thought was the reckless and careless attitude of the officer that she decided to go straight to the police station to make a complaint.

The incident once again raises the perennial question of whether the civil police in Seychelles should be carrying weapons at all times, in a peaceful country such as ours.  The President  and the leadership of his party keeps harping on the fact that Seychelles is the epitome of peace and tranquillity.  If this is so why should our police be carrying guns?

It is conventional wisdom among security experts that a gun in the hands of the ill-trained can be more dangerous for the officer than the criminal. In the incident of last Friday, if the criminal had managed to flee with the gun, it would have been the case of the police unwittingly arming its adversary. 

What concerned many too about the incident of last Friday was the feeling that the police officer making the pursuit had no communication with other police officers or his superiors. Apart from a mobile phone, he had no other wireless communication device that could put him in constant immediate contact with other officers. It appears that the officer was acting alone, more like a bounty hunter or Rambo than part of a team with a mission to apprehend a fleeing criminal or suspect.

It remains to be seen if the officer made a full report to his superiors after the incident and if he was made to account in writing, for the discharge of his gun. The incident bore the hallmark of a different culture, implanted during the one-party state – shoot first and ask questions later, even though the policeman’s life was not in any danger. But most disturbingly,  is the feeling that the authorities are out to commit extra-judicial executions.

Extra-judicial execution of so-called violent criminals by our police and government have been alleged by international human rights organisations as well as by the United States government in its Country Report, following a number of incidents since the Constitution came into force, when police opened fire on unarmed and fleeing prisoners. In Britain, an innocent man shot by police in a case of mistaken identity, in the midst of a violent terrorist carnage, consumed the imagination of the media and the universal condemnation of the police to the exclusion of terrorists who carried the bombs that saw more than 50 innocent people killed  in London mass transit system.

The supreme irony for us is that the first protection in our Charter of Fundamental Human Rights and Freedoms, enshrined in our Constitution, is the Right to Life. Article 15 says: “Everyone has a right to life and no one shall be deprived of life intentionally. A law shall not provide for a sentence of death to be imposed by any court.”

A fleeing unarmed criminal or culprit  is not a threat to a police officer in pursuit of him. In the light of the provision of our Constitution, shooting a fleeing prisoner is tantamount to an intentional killing – an extra-judicial killing. Any police officer who discharges his or her weapon that causes the death of a citizen in such an incident should be held to account for his or her actions under this provision of our Constitution and the criminal justice system. Any of his or her superior or superiors ordering such an action are equally culpable.

Copyright 2006: Seychelles Weekly, Victoria, Mahe, Seychelles