integrity required that the Police deal very openly with the collision which injured pedestrian Mr. Keith Williams on Crawl Hill. Instead, we think, the matter has been dealt with in such a way that it leaves the issue of how Police treat problems involving policemen open to severe questioning when that need not have been the case.

Senior Police should have been extremely careful in dealing with this matter because they were aware, or should have been aware, of allegations, reports and rumours of all sorts, some of them made publicly on television, surrounding the collision between Mr. Williams and an unmarked Police car driven by Det. Con. Alex Severin of the narcotics division.

We think this is an instance where the Police themselves might well have moved for an open public hearing into the collision. If for no other reason, the Police should have considered that the protection of their own reputation made an open hearing important. There is something in this world called self-preservation.

It is vitally important that the public not be given cause to think that the Police judge themselves by different standards than they use to judge civilians.

For years there have been some calls for a non-Police board to deal with internal Police discipline and actions involving policemen and police women.

There is some real feeling and some political agitation toward keeping a public eye on the Police. The Police do not like the idea but they know very well that it is out there. We have to wonder why they did not take action which would have demonstrated an open policy and behaviour above reproach because what the public thinks of this case is very important. If civilian review is implemented because of this event then the Police have no-one to blame but themselves.

A simple announcement that an inquiry had been completed, the files reviewed by the Attorney General's Chambers, and no charges would be laid was not sufficient reassurance for the public in a matter of this kind, no matter what the facts. We have no doubt that the Attorney General and the members of the Attorney General's Chambers dealt with the file in a very straightforward way and made a carefully considered legal decision that there was no charge for the driver to answer. The Attorney General, Mr. Walter Maddocks, has said that in his opinion there was no prima facie case against the officer. We accept that totally. However, no matter how fair the Attorney General has been, the public is not reassured because it has not seen or read answers and, as a result, will see the Police in the light of "them and us''.

There will be ongoing questions about how the Police have conducted this inquiry involving one of their own, what they did and did not put in the file for the Attorney General, and there will be ongoing suspicions rooted in the reports and rumours circulating in this small community no matter what the truth. It may well be that all the reports and rumours are untrue but in a matter this delicate that needs to be demonstrated for the public in order to provide reassurance. Where the Police are concerned the public test is tough and the standard is very high, and it should be.

The Police rely heavily of public goodwill. As a group they have worked hard to establish themselves as a service and not a force. That can all be undone by one controversial incident which the public perceives as preferentially handled. Perception is all that is necessary, not fact or proof.

It really comes down to a question of being seen to be clean....Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. That is vital to Bermuda.