The police force must be more diligent in its application of the Coroner’s Act, PNCR central executive Basil Williams said yesterday while testifying before the Disci-plined Forces Commission.

Although Williams considered that the Act needed to be reviewed and updated, he said it first needed to be used, and he blamed the police and the Office of the DPP for neglecting their statutory duties.

The PNCR in its submissions to the commission says that it is concerned that inquests are not being held and even when they are the progress is slow, defeating the purpose of the Act which provides for inquiries or inquests into unnatural deaths.

“I find it strange that the legislation would apply an obligation with a penalty on the Coroner and not do the same for the Commissioner of Police [when he fails to comply],” Williams said.

He criticised the police force for failing to prepare reports on unnatural deaths for the Coroners, particularly those where policemen were implicated, although he said Section 5 of the Act made it their duty. He said the Act also empowered the DPP but it was not acting either.

“We have found that we have had to go to court on various occasions to force the Commissioner of Police to conform with that duty,” Williams said, citing the cases of John Bruce, Antoine Hous-ton, Steven Grant, Donna McKinnon, Mohammed Shafeek, Azad and Shazad Bacchus and Fadil Ali, Sharon Bramble and Stephen Fitzpatrick Angel. The police and the Berbice Anti-Smuggling Squad (BASS) have been implicated in the deaths of these persons. Williams said there was a deliberate disregard or delay of duty on the part of the police to cover up police executions or tamper with evidence.

“Does your party have any specific evidence of the Guyana Police Force failing to send a report?” the legal counsel for the police, Bernard de Santos SC, asked.

Williams cited the case of Shafeek, a prisoner who died while in custody at the Brickdam Police Station in September 2000. He himself moved to the High Court in October that year for an order forcing the Police Commissioner to supply a report on Shafeek’s death. While only one month elapsed in this case he also referred to the examples of Bruce, Houston and Grant who were killed in July 2001. An order was granted in the High Court in October the same year. Donna McKinnon was killed in April 2001 and the High Court granted an order for the report in June. The Bacchus brothers and Ali were killed in May of 2001, a High Court order for a report was granted in February 2002. Angel died in August 2001 and an order for a report was granted in January 2002.

Chairman of the Commission Justice Ian Chang asked Williams to consider if Section 5 did indeed place a duty on the police to produce a report of an investigation, since it stipulated that any member of the force who knew of an unnatural death must only make a report. Further, he pointed out that Section 6 of the Act provided for the Coroner to initiate an investigation into the cause of death and Section 12, a preliminary investigation. He used these provisions to pose Williams with the interpretation that the duty was actually that of the Coroner’s, rather than the police.

Williams said he was not sure if the Act could be so narrow in its definition of ‘report’, while if it was the Coroner’s responsibility, they were currently without an investigative capacity. In addition he said High Court judges had accepted the interpretation that it was the duty of the police to prepare an investigative report.

Chang acknowledged that in practice the police were responsible for reports of investigations which were adopted for use by the Coroners.

“So we have the problem where the police will prepare a report,” Chang considered.

The PNCR has also recommended the disbanding of the Anti-Crime Task Force unit, more commonly known as the `Black Clothes’. Williams said the unit had made Guyana a killing field with its take-no-prisoners approach. He articulated the party’s concerns over there being no clear operational procedures guiding their actions or any specific rules of engagement. He said this was particularly concerning because these units were armed with high-powered weapons that almost certainly killed rather than subdued.

But Commissioner David Granger told Williams he saw the disbanding of the unit and the reassigning of its ranks as only a structural change and only a temporary remedy to the problem of extra-legal executions. He considered that killings were culturally unique to the force and asked Williams to say how this could be eradicated.

“Certainly you can’t licence any group or unit to kill,” Williams noted, “we can’t encourage that... we must encourage the culture of bringing in prisoners, no matter how heinous the crime, let the law take its course...”

He said engendering this new culture in policemen could start at the training level where the use of a gun could be a last resort.

Granger posed to Williams the situations where extreme criminal violence might warrant an extreme response. Williams said the party had accepted the need for units to confront vicious criminals but also the need to balance good policing and human rights.

“How do we strike that balance?” Granger persisted, to which Williams reiterated that it could only be done through a new unit trained differently and employing best practices like negotiation.

On the police involvement in illegal activities, Williams said that it was known that rogue elements within the force have been guilty of misdeeds. He said this was most evident in the case involving former US Embassy official, Thomas Carroll who it was said recruited members of the `Black Clothes’ to act as enforcers in an illegal visa scheme. Carroll was sentenced to nearly 22 years imprisonment after the scheme was uncovered.

Again Williams said the mismanagement of the unit was responsible for encouraging policemen to turn to crime, reasoning that giving them a licence to kill also gave them a licence to commit other crimes. But he also considered that police involvement in illegal activities might also be rooted in the present conditions of service, which he said could be solved by improving salaries.

The Disciplined Forces Commission was set up by the National Assembly to review the operations of the Disciplined Services. It will give priority to its investigation of the Police Force and will submit a report of its findings and recommendations to the Assembly. Chang is chairman of the Commission which includes former National Security Adviser, Brigadier (rtd) Granger, former Attorney General Charles Ramson SC. Attorney-at-law,Anil Nand-lall and Irish human rights activist, Maggie Beirne are the other members.