Barrister-at-Law, Tommy Astaphan, a Criminal and Constitutional Lawyer of note with 20 years’ practice in Anguilla, has come out in strong support of the top and other ranks of the local membership of the Police Force.

Lawyer Tommy Astaphan

He says that in his profession he works as an adversary to the police, but finds that they are doing an excellent job in crime detection and should not be hurried by the public in the course of their investigative work. To do so can cause mistakes to be made with a number of negative consequences for the police and those arrested or charged.
His comments came in response to criticisms of the local police officers by certain persons. The critics appear to suggest that the lawmen should hurriedly arrest and charge suspects of criminal activity and that there is a need to import policemen to handle the crime situation.

“I have been involved in the practice of criminal law in Anguilla for the last 20 years and as such I have been interacting with the police on a professional level for 20 years in an adversarial position – that is to say against the police,” Mr. Astaphan told The Anguillian. “I have seen a tremendous development of the police in Anguilla over those years. The police force in Anguilla has evolved from a small amateur-type police force into the highly-efficient professional force which it is today.

“While it is true that I practice against the police, I admire the way they do their work most of the times. Like anybody else they are human beings and liable to make mistakes. We all do, including me. That does not make them any less efficient or less professional. It makes them human.

“There has been in the past, and there continues to be, whenever something happens, especially if it involves a certain segment of our community, a hue and cry if the police are not seen to bring somebody to ‘justice’ within a few days of the perpetration of any act contrary to the law. That puts unnecessary pressure on the police.

“For example, when Jamida Webster went missing in March 2003 (and her body was discovered the day after), the police commenced their investigations the very evening. It was either in October of November that year that an arrest was made. Prior to the arrest, the public became restive because an arrest was not made, giving the impression that the public thought that the Anguilla Police Force was incompetent and was not doing its job when in fact that was the opposite of what was happening.

“As a result of the public pressure, police officers were imported and they took over certain aspects of the investigation. Subsequent to their importation Steve Bryan was arrested. The public got the impression that consequent upon the importation of these police officers, a result was achieved - namely the arrest of Steve Bryan; so the public felt validated in their hue and cry and effort to bring assistance for the local police force.

“I am in a unique position to speak about that case for two reasons: number one, as a defence criminal lawyer and being well aware of what to look for in a criminal case and investigation to defend an accused person; and number two, because I was the person charged by the authorities to prosecute the Steve Bryan case, for which I am grateful. I therefore became very intimately knowledgeable of the case, every paper, every document, of every file, every nuance in the case. I will say this now for the record. The Royal Anguilla Police Force had the case solved on the day that they discovered the body of Jamida Webster; and the importation of the police into Anguilla for that investigation did not help the investigation. It hurt it in dramatic ways which nearly led to an acquittal because of the nature and the state of the evidence after they became involved.”

Asked to explain, Mr. Astaphan gave two reasons. “Example number one, the imported police officers conducted some interrogative interviews with Steve Bryan and none of those interviews could be used in the case because they all breached Steve Bryan’s rights. Therefore they were useless for the prosecution of the case and for the investigation of the case. They did not advance it. The second thing is when it was decided to send off the physical evidence for further lab analysis in the United Kingdom. The results of those analyses did not advance the case against Steve Bryan. In fact, they raised doubts, and not because the evidence itself was inherently doubtful as to the question of Steve Bryan’s guilt, but because of the passage of time and the impact of the elements on the forensic evidence, those later tests could not have produced any significant results.

“One may recall that the forensic evidence was exposed to the elements from late afternoon to early morning the next day; that it rained during the night; and that a blood drop was found on Steve Bryan’s boat which was at anchor in the sea.”

Mr. Astaphan said that within a practically reasonable time the exhibits collected at the scene were sent to Jamaica for testing by a competent scientist whose findings in his (Astaphan’s) professional opinion were sufficient to carry the case forward. He said that the scientists at the labs in England, where the exhibits were sent for further analysis, did the best they could in the circumstances in which they found themselves, but it was an unnecessary and, ultimately, counter-produce step.

“If you are going to examine blood, some months after it was found in the open elements, and having degraded further, the odds of getting positive results are greatly reduced,” he went on. “If you had positive results within weeks from the lab in Jamaica, there is no need to go and second guess that scientist. Therefore what you tested some months later (in the UK) and came up with a negative or no result, cast doubts on the initial tests: that is what happened. It is not that the scientists in England did things wrongly or badly, but that it was unnecessary and counter-productive. That led in no small measure to doubts in the minds of jurors as to the guilt of Steve Bryan.”

He explained one of the reasons he gave that example. “It is incumbent upon me as a citizen of this country who is involved in the day to day administration of justice at all levels to let the public know what is what,” he stated. “I do not have a brief for the police, but they are not my enemies either. They are there to protect me just as they are there to protect anybody else, and it is my duty to assist them in doing their jobs properly. When they do not, I come down on them, but when they do, they must be given the praise that they deserve. They must not be used as a scapegoat by anybody. It has gone on for too long and I intend to do what I can to make people realise that they must not permit our police force to be a scapegoat.”

Mr. Astaphan continued: “Presently, I am dealing with matters involving police officers where they have encroached upon the rights of citizens of Anguilla, both their Constitutional and Civil rights. Two of these matters are with the Attorney General’s Chambers and we are at the stage where we are discussing Remedies. I have other complaints which I am dealing with concerning that same group of police officers along the same lines. All of those police officers are imports, presumably brought in to assist and train our police officers. So some of the problems we encounter come from imports. We don’t need imports. We need first of all to acknowledge the efficiency and the quality of the police officers that we have, and I can list them.

“Our Commissioner of Police, Mr. Benjamin, is a very experienced, high trained and good police officer and he is a trained lawyer. Our Deputy Commissioner, Mr. Illidge Richardson, is a highly trained and very experienced police officer; our Superintendent, Mr. Proctor, is a very experienced and highly-trained police officer; Detective Inspector Alice Proctor is highly trained and very experienced. We have Inspector Alan Carty again very experienced and highly-trained. We have Superintendent Ruan, a very experienced police officer.

“The list is long and I have not come close to exhausting it and there are many more accomplished good police officers in our Force. All of these persons are highly accomplished in their profession. We have a fantastic core leading our police force. In my professional opinion, they don’t need assistance from anybody. I am not looking to curry favour with the police because I am the first person to lash them when they need licks.”

Asked to comment on a number of unsolved cases, Mr. Astaphan replied: “There are two ways to look at it. Something happens, the police rush to arrest and charge somebody and then begin to investigate thereafter and one or two results occur. Result number one, the evidence suggests that the person was not involved, but the police have already committed themselves: what will they do? And what does the community do in response to their hasty action? The other result is having done that, they find evidence which inculpates the person, a 50-50 situation. Which is preferable? Taking the risk of wrongfully arresting and charging a person, or, being patient and thorough?

“As a professional defence lawyer, I tell you this. If you are arrested and then they seek to find the evidence after, it always weakens the police case. Any lawyer worth his or her salt who advises the person arrested by the police is under duty to tell the person: ‘keep your mouth shut.’ Nine out of ten times it is that evidence which puts somebody into jeopardy. It comes from their own mouth. The correct way for the police to deal with a case is to take their time and investigate thoroughly; and when they have gathered sufficient credible evidence which points to a conclusion, they act. This is my experience, more often than not, with the present Police Force.

Mr. Astaphan observed that the unsolved crimes did not mean that the police were at fault and that any other police force in the world could solve them. For example, the United States, with all its FBI, regional police forces and every resource that they have, has hundreds of thousands of unsolved cases going back decades. “Is that a reflection on their ability or lack of ability?” he asked. “And can it be a refection on the ability or lack of ability of our police force when we have we have crimes which are not solved? Or which take time to be solved?

“Nobody can come in here and solve those crimes which our police force cannot solve. This is because our police are as good as they are, well-trained and experienced and have an advantage over “imports.” Our police are part of our community and they have personal relationships and contacts with people in our community which would elicit cooperation which imported police officers could never have.

“I have full confidence in our Police Force, as a general rule. When they make mistakes I will hold them to task professionally, because I am not going to put my neck on the block for you and not be able to criticise you when I think you are doing something wrong. I can only sustain my support for you if you sustain the good of your work. I believe that our police officers are generally highly efficient; they are competent officers and if they are cooperated with by the community as a whole, and not looked down upon, or dragged down or have aspersions cast on them, and they are shown the professional respect which they are deserving of, we assist them in doing their jobs better and the results would be satisfying to the community.

Commenting on robberies and such attacks Mr. Astaphan stated: “In a society like ours, the perpetrators are generally speaking a small group of people repeating the acts. But more importantly, our close proximity to St. Martin/St. Maarten and very easy accessibility by people from there creates a situation where they may very well be the ones who come over here and perpetrate some of those acts and go back. This would make it practically impossible for the police to come to conclusive results in their investigations.” This suggestion by Mr. Astaphan is also the view of other persons in Anguilla, although the police do not think so.

“Their surveillance system may be such they could prevent a lot of it, but they can’t prevent all of it,” Astaphan countered. He further said:

“I represent people charged with criminal offences. I know the nature of the people we speak about; and I can tell you a lot of the crimes that have been going on here for the past few years are generally alien to the nature of Anguilla. They are more akin to what goes on next door in St. Martin/St. Maarten. I am not saying that there are not Anguillians or people resident here who are not involved. I am saying that we must not blame our police; we have to look at the whole picture. Remember also that over the last four to five years we have had an influx of people from other countries coming here to work and we don’t know who or what they are. And we can’t expect to increase our workforce two-fold while our police force remains at the same level, have an increase in occurrences of criminal activity and blame our police if we perceive them not to be keeping up to pace. They are.”

He continued: “What we are looking at are anti-social activities which give rise to deep concern for example, invasion of homes, robberies, burglaries and physical assault on people. If we were to check the statistics as a function of population, bearing in mind at all times, the accessibility of Anguilla by people in St. Martin/St. Maarten, we can only come to this conclusion: there is no need to panic; and that our police force has a hand on the controls of the society. They are, in all circumstances, doing an excellent job, save and except for those who have been doing things which have given me professional reasons to lodge complaints.”

Mr. Astaphan summarised his comments as follows:

“The Anguilla Immigration, like the Police, do generally speaking a fantastic job, like the Customs do; and we must learn to give credit to our people. We cannot support those who want to bring down our people. We have institutions in Anguilla and if we perceive weaknesses in any of them it is our duty to support them to correct the weaknesses…The worse thing you can do for the morale of any disciplinary Institution is to bring in imports on the premise that there is a deficiency in our local institution…

“Charity begins at home. Anguilla is now mature enough as a society and a community to be able to continue to produce people of excellence as it has done historically. We must be proud of our police force, of its leadership, all of whom are Anguillians and we must not be so ready to jump in line in pointing fingers at them. Support them and when you have given them your full support, if they are not up to mark, then you replace them with suitably qualified Anguillians or if necessary, fellow West Indians. One of the greatest police chiefs we have had since I have been here is Mitchell Harrigan. There can be no better Police Commissioner anywhere in the Caribbean, or for that matter anywhere in the world, than he was in Anguilla. And his successor is of the same mettle.

“Let us trust Commissioner Benjamin and his Management Team to do the best for Anguilla. If they require assistance, let them request it. Let us not force anything upon them.”

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