The Tribune

Where is Marvin Pratt?

It’s a simple question – but one which authorities seem to have no interest in answering.

The Supreme Court yesterday dismissed a bid by a human rights group to compel police to produce Marvin, while police themselves deny they ever took him into custody – but that leaves a mystery that surely needs to be resolved.

Mr Pratt’s family insist Drug Enforcement Unit officers arrested him on December 5 last year, a claim backed by a neighbour who says she saw four DEU officers arrest him and put him in a police vehicle.

Mr Pratt’s mother says she was told at the police station they had him in custody – only for the officer to go to speak to someone else in the station and return with a different story.

Given such claims, if the police have indeed never arrested Mr Pratt, you would think they would be going all out to find him, wherever he is.

In his speech to the nation this week, Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis said one of the innovations helping to tackle crime was using “geo-referenced based monitoring for the strategic deployment of police officers”. Does this mean there is a record of where all DEU officers were on the day in question? Can this be tracked to confirm whether officers were or were not there at the time?

Where are the search parties, going through the area to try and find a man gone missing in such mysterious circumstances? Where’s the missing person notices to the press asking for our help in trying to find him?

Can we really be at a point where a man can just disappear with allegations of police involvement and we are just expected to shrug and move on?

When asked about the allegations in December, Police Commissioner Anthony Ferguson’s stance was to criticize the media for reporting the claims.

We would like to report on what his force is doing to locate Mr Pratt – but that information is in short supply.

It hardly needs saying (again) – it is past time that every police station, every custody suite, every interview room should be completely outfitted with cameras to record what is going on inside them. It has been promised; now it is time to deliver. Had video footage been available in this case, it would be the work of less than an hour to show whether or not he had been brought into custody. It will protect the police from accusations – and those in their custody from abuse.

Who wouldn’t want this to happen?

Honour her words too

Arise, Dame Janet Bostwick – the first woman to serve in the House of Assembly, the first woman to be Attorney General, and who served as acting prime minister twice – and now a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

Dame Janet deserves recognition for all she has done, and we salute her as she takes her trip to the palace.

As we applaud her, we would also hope that others might listen to her words – in November she spoke at an event for National Women’s Week, and called for the current government to address the disparity between the genders in Cabinet, and to stop placing women in “token positions” but rather give them positions of more substance.

There could be no better time than as Dame Janet is honoured to take her up on her suggestion. Over to you, prime minister.