By ANGELO ARMBRISTER

Freeport News Reporter

The Grand Bahama Human Rights Association (GBHRA) is again taking the Royal Bahamas Police Force to task over the number of officers that it claims should be weeded out as a result of police brutality complaints.

Association President Fred Smith, in an exclusive interview with The Freeport News, said that GBHRA has for the past 20 years been at the forefront in exposing governmental abuse.

"That includes issues relating to police brutality and we have indeed taken cases all the way to the Privy Council in the case of Tamara Merson and to the Court of Appeals with Mr. Harvey Tynes in which we've tried to establish what the human rights and constitutional rights of people in The Bahamas are," Smith said.

Noting that there is no sense in having rights if you have no "remedies," the noted attorney added, "What that translates into is that we need to have a process whereby complaints, whereby cases or instances of alleged abuse, are dealt with in an accountable, efficient and transparent way."

The human rights activist added that in a 21st Century Bahamas, there is much need for a Human Rights Act.

Citing the need for a human rights commissioner and an ombudsman, Smith added, "You may recall that in the Free National Movement's first manifesto they promised to pass a Human Rights Act and create an ombudsman or, simply put, a human rights commissioner."

The job of a human rights commissioner, Smith ex-plained, would be to be available to the public to receive complaints about "government abuse at Immigration, Customs, at Exchange Con-trol, about the police, about cabinet Ministers, about anything to do with the government."

An ombudsman is an institution that citizens can turn to and feel safe in knowing that the commissioner is not a part of the police, is independent of the government and is not beholden to anyone, with the powers to investigate, review and make recommendations of how to rectify certain situations.

That commissioner, Smith said, would obviously not have powers like a Supreme Court judge, in that he could not make decisions or award damages, but would serve as an available forum for the public to turn to in their hour of need.

"He would have an office with a full staff and an inspection team and it would have a presence in The Bahamas and would really demonstrate to the citizenry of The Bahamas and the rest of the world that the government was serious about human rights," Smith said.

Declaring that the association is opposed to the police policing themselves, Smith said the Complaints Unit in the Police Force does make an effort to consider these issues and to investigate, but "as with many similar situations they are not accountable to any objective outside party and so their workings are not scrutinized."

"Much of it happens in private so people don't know what goes on," he explained. "They may very well be investigating, but there is no interaction with the public and so the public feels that they are getting no redress."

Pointing out that the Complaints and Corruption Unit at the police department is not a unit in a position to give any redress, Smith said that people have to understand that although they make a complaint to the police about police abuse, "that is not the end of the matter."

"They are not the ones with the power to do anything about your complaint," he said.

Smith said all they can do is consider the complaint and then have a Police Discip-linary Tribunal decide on whether to discipline the policeman.

"They might very well discipline the policeman internally, but the members of the public may never know what happened," explained Smith, adding that the public needs to become educated about the fact that the Complaints and Corruption Unit is not the place where they are going to get a remedy to fix the problem.

That is what the courts are for, he said, adding, "So if someone has been falsely imprisoned, beaten or their rights have been somehow taken away, they need to go to a lawyer and the lawyer needs to then bring a case because it is the Supreme Court that provides the remedy."

The problem in The Bahamas, Smith explained, is that there is no legal aid to financially assist persons with acquiring legal representation. There also are very few lawyers that deal with these kinds of issues, he said.

"So although people have rights, they don't have the mechanism to convert those rights to remedies," he said. "There is no sense in having flowery language in the Constitution giving fundamental rights and freedoms if they cannot be converted into reality by an effective judicial system that offers remedies in way of punitive damages by a jury and contingency fees where lawyers have a motive to get involved and represent people."

Smith said that it is important for people to realize that the court system is their forum for relief.