SERIOUS CHARGES and accusations have surfaced in which it has been alleged by a prominent lawyer that he believes that the constitutional rights of two of his clients were flouted by law enforcement officials during the Crop Over weekend. He was said to be considering filing a lawsuit for false arrest and imprisonment.
Now, Crop Over has come and gone and praise is in order for those who worked hard to make it the resounding success that it was. This is all the more so in light of threatening messages on social media that Foreday Morning was going to be a bloodbath which influenced some would- be revellers to change their minds about participation.
Both the Minister of Culture and the Royal Barbados Police Force had been at pains to point out that every effort was being made to ensure the safety of participants and that no stone would be left unturned in an all-out and significantly planned effort to ensure safety.
The events turned out to be incident-free, but now we know that some “high-profile persons of interest” spent the Crop Over weekend detained at several police stations in this island. Both Andrew Pilgrim QC and Arthur Holder, well known defence lawyers in criminal cases have complained that one or more of their clients were among those detained and against whom no charges were laid.
Pilgrim was forthright in his assessment. He alleged that they were kept under the guise of an investigation, but that no investigations were carried out during the time they were in custody and that the action was symptomatic of a police state.
On the other hand, Acting Assistant Commissioner with responsibility for crime, Erwin Boyce, pointed out that “any person who is brought into custody is done for investigative purposes, and that he did not know of any other reason why they would be brought in.” He further said that it was quite normal for people to be detained, investigations carried out and those persons released without charge.
The issue is an important one. The police have a duty to be thorough in their investigations and, given the circumstances, they had a duty to take such pre-emptive action as they saw fit to prevent any criminal interference with Crop Over festivities being enjoyed by peaceful law- abiding citizens and visitors alike. The consequences of any violent interruptions to Crop Over by miscreants or those of criminal intent would have been dire.
Yet the Constitution of this country, which is an integral part of our year-long celebrations of Independence, guarantees all of us the right to freedom subject to being detained on reasonable suspicion of having committed a criminal offence or being about to commit an offence.
Opinions will vary about right or wrongs in this exercise. Some people may feel that there is a curious coincidence between persons brought into the stations over the last weekend and the Crop Over celebrations, and yet others will tell us that we must respect the intelligence information gleaned by the Police as a result of their investigations.
But the price of freedom is eternal vigilance and in these delicate situations of balancing the rights of the individuals against the rights of the country at large, great care must always be exercised by those seized with draconian powers of deprivation of freedom. the road to hell is often paved with good intentions.