Editorial | Scandal of CISOCA files

The scandal of old station diaries and other files strewn about the former offices of the police’s sex crime and child abuse unit is not primarily an issue of the constabulary’s negligence in complying with the Data Protection Act (DPA). Although that, too, is in play.

More critically, it represents a failure of common sense, compassion, management oversight, and, should we dare say it, a lack of appreciation, or understanding, of the obligations and responsibilities of the constabulary.

That failure contributes to a blasé attitude to confidentiality – whether it impacts the rights and victims or accused – which helps to undermine public trust in the institution that the police commissioner, Dr Kevin Blake, says the force has had significant success in improving. Those reported gains can’t be allowed to falter.

Therefore, Dr Blake cannot allow the CISOCA matter to merely pass quietly, treated as a minor aberration. People have to be called to account, heads should roll and the public should know whose and how.

To place this issue in its proper context, it is worth reminding that the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s (JCF) Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA) is an extremely sensitive arm of the police force. It is the agency that investigates complaints of sex crimes, including rape, as well as all forms of abuse against children.

Often, the people it deals with, its ‘clients’, are at their most vulnerable, dealing with physical and psychological trauma.

The police officers assigned to CISOCA are therefore required not only to be professional investigators, but serve partly as social workers.

Indeed, investigating sex crimes and/or child abuse thrives in an atmosphere of mutual trust. Except in exceptional circumstances, victims/complainants don’t expect information they share with case officers to be blared in the public domain, especially if it doesn’t reach a court of law. Accused persons, too, have a legitimate expectation that their rights will be respected, in accordance with the law.

EGREGIOUS

Which is what makes this newspaper’s discovery at the old CISOCA headquarters at Ruthven Road, St Andrew – from which the agency moved at least a half year ago – so egregious.

This week, reporters who visited the abandoned site – now utilised as an itinerant shelter and public bathroom by homeless people – found books and documents thrown about the building. Some appeared to be station diaries, containing complaints and reports going back more than a decade.

Malicious persons could easily go through documents and cull information about cases going back to at least 2013, if not further. They could cause substantial mischief.

Hopefully, by now, those documents would have been properly secured.

As is the case with the private sector, the DPA imposes an obligation of care and confidentiality in the management and handling of information which is held on citizens. In The Gleaner’s interpretation of the law, the police force is not exempt from those responsibilities.

That, however, is not the criteria by which we judge the JCF’s actions in this matter. For, even before the advent of the DPA, the police force must have had systems and procedures for the management and security of its files and data, even when they are data-based. Closed files wouldn’t be expected to be just dumped.

CENTRAL REGISTRY

Put differently, it is our assumption that the police, with respect to its paper-based files, maintain a central registry, as well as local/regional ones, so as to ensure the safety and security of sensitive information. Presumably, someone, a senior officer, would have responsibility and oversight for such a division.

Further, when the police move offices, or a station house, we assume that would be a big deal. Care is, or should be, taken to ensure that no documents or other information are left behind that might betray confidences or be otherwise useful to unauthorised persons or malcontents.

Indeed, these moves, we expected, would be followed by debriefings and reviews to ascertain that all the protocols were followed.

Which appears not to have been the case with CISOCA at Ruthven Road. Commissioner Blake should say why, who has been held to account, and how.

Perhaps an apology should be forthcoming to clients whose confidences were breached.