This was the view expressed by a former Chief Inspector of the Royal Virgin Islands Police Force (RVIPF), Vere Browne, when he spoke at a community meeting in Sea Cows Bay last evening, February 16.

The meeting, called by Third District Representative Julian Fraser, gave residents the opportunity to raise a plethora of issues affecting the territory.

Among other things, Brown spoke about issues related to a recent murder in the community and the National Security Council’s (NSC) response of a reward of $20,000 for the arrest and successful prosecution of the offender/s.

Prosecuting is more than a degree

Browne argued that residents have a civic duty to assist the police in solving and preventing crimes and suggested that the issue of prosecution was being conflated in the issuing of a reward.

“You go to your police and you say, it’s John Doe, and they go, they find the guns and the bloody clothes. You have executed your role,” Browne explained. “So the commissioner or the officer in charge sits down with you, fills out the paper, sends it down to the Accountant General and you get your money within the month.”

He continued: “This successful prosecution is a different thing. The DPP’s office with his or her legal team – and as the record shows, they’re having a real drought with convictions – I don’t want to go too deep into that.”

Browne charged that more emphasis needed to be placed on the territory’s prosecutors and suggested that this is where law enforcement is falling down.

The former Chief Inspector further argued that prosecution is a skill that has to be learned and hinted that there was too much faith being placed in the possession of a university degree over at the DPP’s Office.

Browne added: “The police get all this evidence … and you go and you present it, and at the end of the prosecution, the jury says, not guilty. You can’t blame the police, the investigator, or the witness. We have a challenge and we’re just closing our eyes because… they appear to come from a university.”