Malta has one of the oldest police forces in the world, in large, thanks to the colonial period. This is a throwback to the fact that the UK had established a highly professional and well funded corps in Malta to mirror its own law enforcement agency.
The modern Malta Police Corps did not have to change much until recently. Crime was always very low and the duties of police officers could have been described as rather mundane and pedestrian, aside from the odd crime of passion killing.
Our laws also went unchanged for many years, leading the Corps to rely on confessions for prosecution and conviction, given that suspects did not have the right to a lawyer during police interrogation.
Fast forward to 2016. Malta is part of an integrated Europe, with over a million tourists visiting the islands every year. We are also one of the most plugged in countries in Europe, giving rise to an increase in cyber crime and other economic and fraudulent crimes. In an interview with this newspaper published yesterday, Police Union Chief Sandro Camilleri has sought to deflect criticism against the Corps, saying that more investment, training and better salaries are needed. He is correct. Policing is no longer the job that it used to be, with officers often having to put their lives on the line in dealing with drug related or violent crime.
He also makes the case that specialised crime needs specialised officers. Thos investigating cyber crime, for example, need to study long and hard and do not find the low wages offered by the state to be attractive when they could get other IT related jobs elsewhere. Again, he is correct. The Police Corps has been under-funded, under-trained and left lagging for a number of years now. It is always easy to hurl criticism at the Corps, but is that criticism justified, given that officers are not paid well, overstretched and often undervalued by society.
Many have made claims of police brutality, and sometimes they are correct, even ending up in court with convictions against offending officers being made. But this does not mean that all officers should be tarred with the same brush. Only 25 years ago, or so, being a policeman was often the last resort for people who could not get into college and/or university. But this has changed over the years and many people do find a rewarding career in law enforcement.
But it is becoming clear that disenfranchisement is growing. We have got to restore pride in the Police Corps. Commissioner Michael Cassar certainly had his work cut out for him in restoring faith in the Corps, and he seems to have made some headway. But he also needs political support as well as financial support.
The government needs to order an exhaustive evaluation and audit of the Corps to see where manpower is lacking, where training is lacking, if pay structures are fair and more. We need more constables. Every year more recruits are taken in than the year before, but it is still abundantly clear that they are short on manpower. One side issue that Mr Camilleri touched on was the fitness of officers. He said that some find it difficult to join gyms because of financial or time constraints. On this point, we do not agree. The Police Corps should have its own fitness centre and physical training should be a requisite and part of the programme. While we agree that there are great number of loyal and capable officers, people still find it ridiculous that a thief in flip flops managed to outrun an overweight police officer who was on the beat. It might be painful to admit, but some of them are simply too heavy or physically unfit for the job.