The Tribune

IT almost feels like it should go without saying that excessive force should not be something police officers resort to – and yet Commissioner Paul Rolle has set his sights on exactly that problem.

The commissioner is absolutely correct that this is a problem that needs to be dealt with. Too many times over the years have defendants come to court and complained that they were beaten by police or their confessions were extracted under duress. Some of those will be false claims, of course, but too many times it seemed to be true, giving even the false claims more credence.

We have heard it many times here at The Tribune too, both on and off the record.

In these pages, we have recounted many cases of alleged brutality. There were the claims in 2019, for example, of three people who said they were tortured by police in Eleuthera, including being bound and beaten, a fish bag being put over their heads and hot sauce poured into an eye.

There were two women in August of that year who accused a police officer of punching them in the face in Exuma.

In March of that year, attorney Christina Galanos released a video clip showing a client being helped into an ambulance after he was allegedly beaten to force a confession.

Many defence lawyers and even some top legal officials in previous administrations have told The Tribune that torture for confessions is a genuine problem in The Bahamas.

Just yesterday, it was reported an investigation is under way into claims that a Cat Island local government official was beaten by officers in Long Island and denied medical attention.

So it is in this environment that Commissioner Rolle says that he is writing material for the force’s manual that seeks to train officers in sensitisation and de-escalation.

That also runs hand in hand with the number of incidents involving police-involved shootings, where officers with the appropriate training might be able to stop the situation from escalating to the point where bullets fly rather than words.

As Commissioner Rolle said: “I am saying we have to start somewhere to fix that problem. Just simply locking up police officers and prosecuting police officers, that’s not good enough. We have to try to prevent that.”

Harking back to the early days of policing, he said: “You look at Robert Peel’s policing principles and we have been doing a lot of it. But one of those principles is (that) the police are there to build relationships and the more you have to use force to get compliance the less cooperation you get.”

This is not a new topic for Commissioner Rolle – he has spoken before of the need to reduce incidents of brutality, saying just last month that he wanted to remove the “warrior mentality” from officers. We applaud him for such a move.

He is also taking the right approach in trying to rewrite the manual. He won’t be the man in charge forever, but if he can change the way in which officers are trained to find a better way, it can make an impact for a generation or more.

At its heart, however, is a simple belief that it should not be us and them when it comes to the police and the community, but officers as part of the community, working together with citizens.

Some of that can also come from improved accountability, making sure that complaint mechanisms work and issues are handled in a timely manner rather than being left to run out of time for a complaint to be dealt with.

But if we can take some of the antagonism out of the policing system, and find better ways to resolve conflicts, it will be a step forward for our nation.

To that end, we wish Commissioner Rolle well in his goal, to improve the force, and to improve our society.