January 4, 2002

Dear Sir,

I have no hesitation whatsoever in supporting the contention of Mr. Larry Mussenden that there is no authority vested in the Police to arbitrarily create road blocks for the purpose of trying to discover if someone in or on a vehicle has an outstanding warrant against him/her.

After reading what the Commissioner of Police had to say (Royal Gazette January 4, 2002) in support of the recent road blocks, namely that "the Attorney-General's Chambers had assured him oficers were acting within the law," I am beginning to wonder if the Commissioner has misinterpreted what the Attorney-General's office conveyed to him through its Opinion.

It is well settled law that in order for the police to stop anyone going about their lawful business, there must be reasonable cause, reasonable grounds - call it what you will - for such actions to be within the law. Many a high Court judge has stated this proposition time and time again, but for some reason, the Bermuda Police seem not to understand its exact meaning.

There is no correlation between the contents of the Judges' Rules (which incidentally are not law) regarding the Police authority to question anyone when a crime has been committed, and setting up road blocks for "identity discovery,' to coin a phrase. The defining difference is that in the latter case, the Police have the names of the persons they are looking for.

This is not the first time that this issue has come up for discussion but in typical Bermuda fashion, some individuals' supercilious on-the-street opinion seems to be the guideline the Police are prepared to follow rather than the law. Mr. Commissioner, the Police have no greater powers of search and seizure because there are a scandalous number of outstanding warrants!

Some years ago, a Police officer stopped a man on the street, chastised him about lawful habits and then threatened to arrest him not because of any traffic offence, but merely because both of them shared affection for the same female and this was his method of showing who was in charge. Is the Commissioner giving sanction to this kind of behaviour? Surely this cannot be lawful. And the fact that some individuals on the street do not mind being searched because as they said, they don't "have anything to hide" is a personal disposition (albeit a patently silly if not dishonest one) and not a legal principle.

The Police like the rest of us must act according to law.

The Commissioner stated and I think rightly, that he was advised that there must be authority under the law to stop an individual. I would like to know what authority there was for Police to stop vehicles and inquire about the names of the occupants and having satisfied themselves that a particular name was not on the list of warrants, allowed the vehicle to continue.

The Commissioner seemingly has failed to grasp one crucial point and that is, there must be some nexus between that person stopped and the offence or circumstances under investigation. In the case of warrants the Police already had the names of the offenders. What legal right exists to stop John Smith when there is an outstanding warrant for Tom Brown?

Why I think that the Commissioner has misinterpreted the Opinion he received is that even though he stated that the Attorney General Chambers said he was acting within the law he goes on to say, "We are within our rights to stop people on the road if we have authority under...legislation... or we stop an individual because we know that in that motorcar or on that motorbike is a person for whom a warrant is in existence". That, Mr. Commissioner is your only legal authority. If the reader cares to refer to my example of John Smith and Tom Brown above, it must be clear to the Commissioner and anyone knowing the circumstances, that there is no legal authority to randomly stop vehicles for the purpose of discovering if by chance there is a warrant for an occupant of that vehicle. There is no doubt that the Police can stop a vehicle if they genuinely believe (even a mistaken belief) that there is a warrant for someone in or on that vehicle. The roadblocks in question that were set up during the early morning hours cannot claim any such justification. To call this a fishing expedition would not do justice to the situation since we are dealing with the 'liberty of the subject'. In my opinion, this was an out and out 'trawling' exercise.

As a student of law and a member of this community I am concerned for two reasons that organs of the state do not misappropriate arbitrary unlawful powers. Firstly, in a small society such as ours with the legacy of our recent history, the abuse of such power would be a reality rather than a theoretical notion. Secondly and much more importantly, if the Police are allowed to stop anyone for reasons unassociated with the legal rules by which they are governed, I defy anyone, to show me the difference between that reality and what existed until recently in the Soviet Bloc countries.

Even though there are some in our midst who would perhaps even volunteer to have their rights whittle away I hope that the majority of us would resist the temptation to be so dangerously gullible.

LAW STUDENT

Warwick