Sledgehammer to crack a nut

Malta Independent on Sunday

March 7

It is not reasonable to harass hundreds of law-abiding citizens to secure the arrest of a few on relatively minor offences. I am referring to roadblocks. I have been writing about this ridiculous state of affairs, in a supposedly democratic country the size of a pea, for over a decade. But it has not seemed to worry many people.

Recently, however, the subject has again come to the fore and it is now bothering more and more people who believe in civil liberty. And some of the new reasons we have been given for this gross infringement of civil liberties are frankly ludicrous. Among the hundreds stopped and frisked a few people were indicted for driving without a valid driving licence and vehicle insurance cover.

Maybe roadblocks bother me because I lived in London for most of my adult life and am so unused to them. To me they signify oppression or a war zone. Before coming back to Malta in the early 1990s, I only saw them on television - in Northern Ireland, other countries with internal strife and others either under martial law or with tyrannical regimes.

According to the report I read last week, our Armed Forces have set up 25 vehicle checkpoints this year. Have we had terrorist alerts? Reliable information about a coup d’état? Big drugs stings?

One would have thought that at least one of these very serious possibilities got authorisation for the roadblocks. But no, our soldiers have obviously nothing better to do and cannot swan around with rifles in life threatening situations, so they are sent to intimidate the public and ensure they do not drive without a licence or insurance.

Out of the 295 cars stopped and searched since January, 28 individuals were detained, half of the latter were arraigned for traffic contraventions. Last week, five men were caught, near Birzebbugia and in the vicinity of Cospicua, not for being suspected of robbing banks or committing some murderous crime, or even carrying cannabis, but for driving without a valid driving licence and vehicle insurance cover.

Come on, are we for real here! Can’t the authorities see that this is a laughable situation? Using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Does it take a platoon of armed soldiers hassling nearly 300 innocent people to bring these people to book?

Even if the other 14 were held on drug charges (none were a big haul) and the searches did find one man with knives in his vehicle's glove compartment, it is still not justified to put that many blameless people through the indignity and hassle of a stop and search exercise.

How do the authorities validate stopping vehicles and searching passengers without reasonable suspicion that the people involved are about to commit a crime?
If a roadblock were authorised because of a serious crime like a big drug sting, the police would know exactly which vehicles to target.

This random fishing in the hope of catching something big is unprofessional, to say the least, and is riding roughshod over the law-abiding public. Nine people out of the hundreds stopped and frisked on their way to the Nadur Carnival via Cirkewwa were detained, the majority on drug-related offences. And I am sure that none of the nine were big fish either.

But the implication was that the hundreds going to the Nadur Carnival had intent to break the law. Was this a ploy to discourage people going to the Nadur Carnival? This tactic does work, apparently.

One commentator online had this to say: “I do not go to big events so as to avoid these irritating, embarrassing, abusive roadblocks. Go to private parties and avoid them. Also do not pass from main roads, if you don't want to be abused and humiliated.”
Well, if that does not spell out – Police State – I don’t know what does.

I was amused by the ignorance of some commentators online that failed to see the implications of roadblocks. “I am all for roadblocks, but don’t harass my family, or me” was a common comment, another was “I have nothing to hide, so I don’t mind the roadblocks”.

The point is that if you are stopped, it should mean that the soldiers believe that they have good reason to stop and search you. Therefore, even if you have nothing to hide, being stopped and frisked means you are being treated like a potential criminal.

People are confused, like this parent: “As a father of teenage boys, I am all in favour of these searches as they are a deterrent to abuse etc, but I cannot condone situations where young teenagers are provoked into incidents such as these.”

I am not sure what he meant by provoked, but anyway he continued: “Without in any way being against roadblocks and searches of these types, I cannot not show my disapproval to some of the methods used. My 18-year-old son and his friends were stopped near Cirkewwa for a random search. So far so good...” he said.

Well you see, it is not “so far so good”, because random searches do not show reasonable suspicion. They are, as the word random suggests – haphazard, arbitrary, casual, unsystematic, indiscriminate, hit and miss.

The parent continued: “ They all obeyed instructions given to them by the soldiers, who were far too aggressive in their approach. These boys had not committed any crime, yet they were subject to conditions as if under arrest!
They were ordered not to answer their mobile phones throughout the 15 minutes or so it took to conduct a very intensive body search. I find this an abuse of power and a serious breach of human rights, as these boys were not under arrest or detained in any way.”

Well all I can say to this parent is: that is what roadblocks, that he is so not against, are all about. First of all, soldiers should not even be involved, these minor law infringements are a matter for the police.

If the police were worried that drugs were going to be a problem at the carnival, they should have used their sniffer dogs, not use the whole jaunt as an exercise for 4th Regiment's Training School.

As for the intensive body searches, I think people need to know more about their rights.
Another commentator was confidant that he knows his rights and said: “I have nothing to hide, therefore I am all in favour of these roadblocks, even if they detained only 1 person for drug related arrest, let alone 14. If I think their method and manners are unprofessional, I will simply refuse to let them search me, without the presence of a lawyer.”

Well that would not be so easy according to the concerning quote a prominent criminal lawyer gave the Sunday Times "Experience teaches us that where people have dared to protest they were eventually charged in court with having interfered or tried to influence people carrying out their duties, and this is precisely why the legislative framework and the way it is implemented is clearly not sufficient at the moment."

Many seem to be taken in by the idea that this harassment of the public is going to put a stop to the drugs market. It is doing no such thing, it is all eyewash. Thankfully though, more people are now quite savvy about this abuse of our civil rights. And are making their voices heard.

Now although I am against roadblocks, I think it is right that the police, not the army, hold random checks at Christmas and New Year to deter drink driving. But this indiscriminate stopping and searching of hundreds of law-abiding citizens, to catch out a few on minor offences, has to stop if we continue to believe that we live in a free and democratic country.