PCA to table its first report in a decade
The first report in almost a decade for the island’s only police oversight body is soon to be tabled in Parliament.
The Police Complaints Authority is required by law to give the Minister of National Security and the Governor an update on the “exercise of its functions” every year — but its most recent publicly available report is from September 2014.
A Ministry of National Security spokesman told The Royal Gazette it had received a report for 2022 from the PCA and it would be tabled "during the next session" of Parliament, which begins on November 3.
There was no answer from national security minister Michael Weeks, Rena Lalgie, the Governor, or PCA chairman Jeffrey Elkinson to questions about the lack of annual reports for the intervening years.
Magistrate Khamisi Tokunbo last week described the PCA as a “useless body which lacks the public’s confidence” after it ignored a complaint he made about two police officers.
Others have shared their concerns with the Gazette that the publicly funded authority is not operating effectively in holding the Bermuda Police Service to account.
Lawyer Jerome Lynch, KC said his client Zarah Harper, who recently won a civil lawsuit for unlawful arrest against the BPS and $50,000 in damages, would not complain to the PCA.
“She’s done with it,” he said. “The PCA seem extraordinarily slow to deal with complaints.
“That's probably why people don’t complain, and it’s often seen as a whitewash anyway. Jeffrey Elkinson needs to give this up to someone who will be more responsive.”
Mr Lynch added: “There seems to be very little confidence in the PCA generally.”
The PCA, an independent body set up by statute to investigate complaints about the police, has previously faced accusations of inactivity and unresponsiveness.
The Police Complaints Authority Act 1998 requires it to be notified of every complaint about the police. It can then defer action until the BPS completes its own investigation of a grievance or “conduct its own investigation, whether or not a police investigation is or has been undertaken”.
The PCA can also choose to take no action or to ask the police commissioner to seek informal resolution, but it must tell the commissioner and the complainant the course of action it plans to take.
Victoria Greening, Mr Tokunbo’s lawyer, said last week there had been “zero communication” from the PCA about her client’s complaint, first made in December 2020.
She was also unable to get answers from the BPS about its internal investigation into the same complaint. Mr Tokunbo found out from the Gazette that the two officers were cleared of wrongdoing by the BPS’s professional standards department, after an internal report was shared with the newspaper.
Another complainant, Eron Hill, said he made an allegation of misconduct against three police officers in May this year and has yet to receive a proper update on how the matter is being handled.
Inspector Kemar Peters, from the professional standards department, wrote to him in August to say: “The BPS takes all complaints seriously and work is being done to ascertain all the facts in relation to your report. Kindly note that the Police Complaints Authority is aware of your complaint.”
Mr Hill told the Gazette: “I've had absolutely no contact with the PCA. Although Inspector Peters says the PCA is aware of the complaint, it is unclear to me on what basis the PCA would be aware of the complaint if it hasn't been formally referred to them as yet.
“I'm completely in the dark as to the status of the investigation.”
The most recent annual report available on the PCA’s website is for the period January 1, 2012 to September 1, 2014.
The Bermuda Parliament said yesterday that was the most recent tabled report for the authority that it could find in its system.
The Gazette has previously asked the PCA for information about its work under public access to information.
In 2019, in response to a Pati request, it disclosed that it received 26 complaints in 2017 and 41 complaints in 2018 but that during those two years it focused solely on an inquiry into the parliamentary pepper spray protest of December 2016 and “did not launch any other investigations”.
The Office of the Ombudsman, which investigates grievances about public authorities, has received 17 complaints about the PCA since 2013, according to its annual reports.
The office rejected a Pati request from the Gazette in August for details of those complaints on the grounds the records were not subject to the Pati Act.
In addition to Mr Elkinson, the PCA’s members are Barrett Dill, Ernestine deGraff, Winston Esdaille, Charles Mooney and Charlene Scott, who is the deputy chair.
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