Opinion: Bad Policing is a global issue
I am writing this at a time there are protests around the world, started with an incident that killed George Floyd by a policeman in the US. The protest is addressing racism in the society. However, there is a bigger issue relating to policing itself.
Police violence is something I grew up with. I witnessed it first hand–I was victim of one incident. But then, I heard hundreds of stories of police violence over last 40 years. Some had fatal endings–like the case of Gerald Perera in Sri Lanka (https://www.bbc.com/sinhala/news/story/2004/11/041124_ahrckilling.shtml) When Gerald/Gerard narrated his brutal torture in the hand of police officers of Wattala Police Station me in November 2003, I never knew he was going to be killed by the same officers because he was going to testify as a witness for the Government/prosecution (due to public, local and international concern on this case, Attorney General’s Department did a rare thing–indict the police officers who tortured Gerard) . Photo of him in the above BBC post was taken by me in 2003 and about an year later he was gunned down in broad day light when he was going to work, a few days before he was to testify as a witness for the prosecution.
When I was growing up in Sri Lanka I was directly or indirectly connected to police personnel. I had two uncles who were police officers. I got to know many police officers later on, some who were Deputy Inspector Generals (DIGs) of police and some who left Sri Lanka Police (SLP) due to personnel issues. I have friends and classmates who have been with the police. Currently a long time high school classmate is serving as a high ranking officer of SLP. A number of school classmates’ fathers were senior police officers.
Then, when I was living in Hong Kong for over 18 years, I used to assist Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF), which I thought was comparatively a better police force in the whole of Asia up until 2014 Umbrella Movement Protests and more seriously during last year (June 2019-present). In fact I have visited over 20 police stations in Hong Kong, Kowloon and New Territories. I have been to interrogation rooms and sat with police personnel for hours, who were taking statements from the accused. I have witnessed the language they use to talk to the accused–it start with Cantonese term f your mother (fym) sounding like delay-no-more and end with the same term. For example, “fym/delay-lo-more, where were you last evening, fym/delay-lo-more.” This is not an exaggeration, but this what I have witnessed at every police station, especially those who were with criminal investigation department, wearing civilian clothes. Whenever they use that term with accused I was assisting, I refused to proceed until they stopped using such a language. This resulted in tension between them and I. They needed me more than I needed them. They resentfully complied. Often the accused who were subject to this type of demeaning and humiliation treatment were people from the lower strata of the society in Hong Kong, for example hawkers. The affluent people always had their lawyers present when police were taking a statement. At least during those days (this is over 14yrs ago), there was resentful respect for lawyers by the police. But, when the lawyers were not around they referred to them as puk-kai, another insulting term commonly used in Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s historical evolution from a corruptly administered place to a clean and accountable society happened with the police. Those who are interested in this, should read the case of corrupt British police officer Peter Godber. This single case resulted in the creation of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) and civil service, and more importantly police reforms. I recommend you read the contents linked to above page on ICAC to come to an understanding how corrupt civil servants, especially the police were then.
Let me get back to the police violence I referred to above. When my uncles were talking about the police, they often referred to use of force as something very normal. “I took my belt (Police belts were thick and strong) off and hammered the bugger (the accused) until he was begging me to stop,” was a common thing I heard from my uncles. Only later I began to understand my uncles were beating up suspects to extract information. Why? Because there was firm belief that they were quite sure that the person they arrested was the the right one. Such belief was there then and is present now. Police always think they have the right suspects and they are guilty. Again, why beat up suspects? First, to teach them a lesson–a quick punishment. And second to find out more information from them. We now know that, that is in fact the definition of torture. But I did not know that then. And many police officers still do not know that. And most who know the definition of torture and that is illegal to do so openly disregard it. This is because there are no sanctions in many police forces when they commit torture, unless it was caught on video and there is a public outcry. Most police beatings happen behind closed doors of a police cell, investigation room, illegal detention centre or inside a police vehicle where there are no cameras or civilian witnesses. Only witnesses are the fellow police officers who take part in the beating or watch it without intervening.
One of the two uncles who used to work for SLP was a criminal investigator. I do not think he took part in police beatings as he was trained as a person to collect fingerprint evidence. I have seen his fingerprint gathering equipment, those grey dust, brushes, and large photos of fingerprints he would examine to find a match–yes, in 1970s they did this process manually, no computer programs to process finger print matching. But that is exactly the point about investigations. Finding the truth through scientific evidence–which was painstaking but mostly leading to conviction of the right person for the crime he/she committed. You do not need to go that far, I know from a number of police officers I have met from a number of countries that you can uncover a lot of useful information through a decent yet skillful interview. But, how many police officers are trained in these interviewing techniques? What we see on the TV or movies are police beating up suspects in interview rooms is not scientific interview. There may be many reasons for police not using interview techniques and resorting to violence to extract information. One is they are simply not trained on those techniques. Many police learn from experience. They watch their senior officers resorting tho these coercive methods and they learn that on the job. There is always police camaraderie to protect and cover one another–often gloried through TV series or movies. Another reason to resort to coercive methods is pressure from the top (police, political or public) on a police force to resolve a case within a short period of time–“you have three days to find who did this” is kind of orders imposed on low level police officers. In fact, tragic case of Gerald/Gerard Perera in Sri Lanka was due to such pressure. There was a triple murder in Hendala area (ironically where I grew up) and police were under pressures to find the murderers. They got a tip that the suspect’s name is Jeyaraj. When police were looking for Jeyaraj, someone misheard the name Jeyaraj as Gerard and was thinking police were looking for Gerard. They then tipped the police with the location of Gerard. Gerard was picked up near his home by police in civilian clothes without any warrant card. Police blind folded him, tied his hands and brought him to the Wattala Police Station. Irony is that they did not even tell Gerard why they picked him up–he had absolutely no idea who picked him up and for what reason. There Gerard was kept blindfolded, hung on a beam on the roof and beaten with metal poles overnight. His joints were permanently damaged due to hanging. In the morning police who arrested Gerard learned that they caught the wrong suspect. They then told Gerard, “sorry mate, we got the wrong person” and released him. Gerard was so severely beaten up that he had to be hospitalized and put on life support system at the incentive care unit for 4 days, after which he regained consciousness. He was later awarded compensation by the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka: https://www.lawnet.gov.lk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/037-SLLR-SLLR-2003-1-SANJEEWA-ATTORNEY-AT-LAW-ON-BEHALF-OF-GERALD-MERVIN-PERERA-v.-SURENDRA-OFFI.pdf This is just one such story. There are hundreds if not thousands of stories like this from Sri Lanka, India and many other Asian and African countries. These incidents are not exceptional incidents, but frequent and widespread. They do not hit mainstream news because most of these people are not famous or affluent, they are the poor and socially marginalized sectors of the society.
So, there is fundamentally something wrong in policing itself. There are a number of reasons for that. Here are a few: absence of proper/comprehensive police training; many hired to be police are those who cannot find jobs due to their low educational standards, when there is training, police training is focused on use of force against scientific investigations; when they train on scientific methods of investigations, such training is not sufficient; when police use violence against civilians (even on camera) they are not held accountable by the justice system (what is happening in Hong Kong currently, for example); police complaint mechanisms are designed to defend the police force that actually investigate police–most police complaint mechanisms are conducted by the same police force that commit the violations; so called independent police investigations mechanisms often lacks independence, or do not have power to take action against violating police officers–they can only make recommendations and publish reports. As a result, police forces can function with impunity or in other words, without proper checks and balances. Another quite amusing observation–when a police officer is found through internal investigations to have committed torture or abuse, they get what is called transfer-promotion–transferred to a new department/location with a promotion.
Such ability to function with impunity is reinforcing many police forces, most of the time, to take law into their own hands. Police should be serving and protecting–not shoving and attacking (like the incident when Buffalo NY police shoved a 75-year-old man to the ground injuring his head).
My former colleagues in Hong Kong, Basil Fernando used to say, “Police have moved on from law-enforcers to order-enforcers.” This essentially means in many developing countries in Asia and Africa, police are at the whims of politicians and the powerful in the society. A politician can call a police station and ask them to do anything and the police would often comply. Often such initiatives are illegal. I have also observed, at least in Sri Lanka, police would allow Buddhist monks to resort to any illegal act, like assaulting civilians, and do nothing. Extremist Buddhist monks have used their saffron robe as a protective shield to resort to racist and violent actions while police have become bystanders.
We often have come across the term riot-police: police in so called riot gear deployed on the streets often during public demonstrations. Most these demonstrations are peaceful gatherings. Then why deploy riot police during public rallies and demonstrations? In Hong Kong confrontations on the part of young protesters with the police have labelled riots. Essentially, these were demonstrations turned violent due to police using violent tactic (there are allegations in Hong Kong that some such violence were initially instigated by the undercover police pretending to be demonstrators). Therefore, I think it is a mistake to deploy police in riot gear towards peaceful gathering of people. Police often become provocateurs of violent acts, youth respond to such violence with counter violence and then police end up arresting young people/protesters for disturbing public order. This can be attributed to the vicious cycle of violence. Here, I am not in any way condoning violence by the demonstrating in youth in Hong Kong. In fact violent tactics deployed by young demonstrators in Hong Kong are gradually alienating them from the general population.
Due to all these issues, police in general have lost its credibility. They have become stooges of politicians. They have lost the trust and respect of people. They, like in Hong Kong, have begun to lose control. This way of policing will lose the original purpose of policing–maintaining peace and enforcing the law. Therefore, we need fundamental changes in the way policing is conducted. We need professional, competent, law-abiding law enforcing police. We need compassionate, caring, mediating, communicating police force. We do not need police in riot gear who can only talk the language of violence through their batons, stun guns or real guns. We need more community policing who can reason through dialogue. Basically, we need to have a paradigm shift in policing.