If the Police Commissioner doesn’t want to be door-stepped, he should try calling a press conference
Published:
August 28, 2013 at 3:47pm
Refusing to comply with his democratic duty to speak to the press is just not an option.
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That is an unreasonable demand. The Commissioner only calls press conferences to defend the actions of the Minster’s chief of staff.
Muscat’s, (or is it Mallia’s) “puppet” is playing bully with the press. Not a good sign, I would say.
Strange how Times of Malta didn’t bother to report the Police Commissioner rudeness to its own reporter.
Maybe strange, maybe just wise.
http://bit.ly/190ytBO
Hemm xi brimba fit-Times.
What is even more strange is the sudden transformation of this supposed journalist
The way the Malta psyche works, having the printing presses of The Times burnt to the ground once, under the eyes of the police, would be only a silly prank by a few naughty hotheads having their fun and only a slight “misfortune” for The Times employees trapped inside.
With similar police officers still running the police force, risking a repeat arson, even in a good cause, would be “unforgivable carelessness”.
Sad, but true.
You know that we are in 2013, SUR KUMMISSARJU TAL-PULIZIJA.
Tat-tkexkix. He is the people’s servant, a civil servant. He SHOULD reply. But in my opinion that “ghdtlek ieqaf” was a clear and present threat. Stop or I will shut you up. That’s what being implied here.
The police commissioner clutching a microphone firmly away while gesturing with his index finger like a primate. It’s something straight out of a dystopian novel.
Could this be a sign that the press is finally going to do its job? I commend this journalist for standing up for his rights and those of the hundreds of other journalists who are acting more like Simon Busuttil at the moment, on the false assumption that allowing oneself to be walked all over is somehow gentlemanly.
This journalist displayed what it really means to be a gentleman as opposed to a rug for people to walk all over. I don’t want to be accused of over-stating this but today this journalist stood up for each and every one of us. We will not return to the dark days before real democracy was re-born in 1987.
[Daphne – I don’t commend that journalist at all. Gentleman, my great-aunt Sally. You should have heard the scummy reasons he gave for not voting – all 100% personal and spiteful. The slime didn’t vote because he wanted the Nationalist Party to lose the election, and now he’s playing the big hero. Simon Busuttil is out of his mind to trust him or take his advice. There’s another JPO-style dysfunctional personality if ever I saw one, and Busuttil is a rotten judge of character if he can’t work that out. The golden rule of life: if they did it to somebody else, they will think nothing of doing it to you.]
X’arroganza u abbuz ta’ poter.
Guilty as sin. How frightening – enough to make the skin crawl.
What an arrogant prick.
Next time we will send Simone Cini or Glen Bedingfield to question the Commissioner of Police. Naraw kemm jaghttih il-microphone.
I love the way the Police Commissioner used his mobile phone to calm and settle him down like mothers use dummies, pacifiers, comforters or soothers.
What an exemplary performance.
The Commissioner of police should be ashamed of himself. Being aggressive to journalist shows that he is not fit for the job, he represents the police and his job is to protect and to serve the community.
This attitude is untenable.
The only place where a policeman’s job is easy is in a police state.
Fascists, the whole lot of them.
It gives me such comfort to have a police commissioner who understands the basic tenets of democracy.
Anzi ma arrestahx.
He only accepted to reply to the Maltatoday journalist from the Balzan-Degiorgio skip.
Meta il-Kummissarju tal-Puluzija mhux lest li jirrispondi d-domandi tal-media dwar affarijiet li huma tal-interess pubbliku mhu sinjal tajjeb xejn.
Il-Kummissarju, bhala servjent tal-pubbliku, u mhallas mit-taxxi tal-poplu, ghandhu d-dmir li jirrispondi ghal kull domanda legittima li titpogga lilu.
Fi spazju ta’ anqas minn sitt xhur, Joseph Muscat u l-Partit Laburista fil-gvern regghu tefghu Malta 30 sena lura ghaz-zmienijiet ta’ abbuz flagranti tat-tmeninijiet.
What a rude and arrogant twat. And yes, I mean the Police Commissioner.
“Jekk ma jimpurtax, qeghdin go d-depot”. Iss hej, busli s**mi.
Give up hope all who enter. Id-depot. Tiftakru x’kienet tfisser dik il-kelma?
The Police Commissioner said in an interview that he wanted to be friend of the media. But I suppose that means only if the media is friendly to him.
Rather heavy-handed, grabbing his microphone and pointing a finger in his face. Would like to see him in action during a riot.
Thank God that it was only a mobile phone or a microphone. In other times, but also during an MLP government, it was a service automatic that was shoved in the face of a bewildered priest because he hadn’t given way promptly enough to the Commissioner of Police, in mufti, coasting along in his private car.
Barely six months of governance and it looks like we are moving from Moviment Laburista to a Dictatorial Labour Regime. God help us…..God graciously hear us.
Perhaps the poor soul is tired of his copy-paste job in Brussels and is now into investigative journalism.
Missu tah scoop zghira, miskin, biex ma jkunx gie d-Depot ghalxejn.
Mhux sew.
Are you feeling ok? It’s not like you to pass over the slightest whiff of totalitarianism.
Let’s put it this way, La Redoute: it’s difficult to comment on former colleagues as it might be taken personally.
Besides, here we see Ivan Camilleri, the Brussels copy-paster, trying his hand at ambush journalism, Super One style, and it’s a bit of a joke, really.
Ivan Camilleri is indeed a bit of a joke, as are the Commissioner of Police, those that gave him that position, and all the twats (like Ivan himself) who behaved in the election in such a way as to get this pile of excrement into office – either by voting Labour, voting AD or not voting at all, which is what Ivan and his lady wife did.
The problem with this case is that a molehill has become a political media circus and the personal involvement of the Commissioner of Police is completely out of place.
From the very beginning he should have simply delegated the matter to the district chief for it to be channelled down the line to an inspector.
The criminal offence in question does not warrant a higher rank (although I must admit I did not have the patience to go through the trivial incident as far as crime is concerned).
I’m talking, of course, about the MTV incident, not the Zambi debacle.
I guess this is the price to pay for having your minister being in the pay (as a defence lawyer) of some of Malta’s most notorious criminals for the past year.
Seemed quite a while since the word frameup was used in our political vocabulary. So worrying that such word is going to resurface again
One word: ARROGANZA.
What also struck me was the WPC’s ‘injunction’ to the press people to stop their questions “ghax, jekk ma jjimpurtax, qeghdin fid-Depot”
I was never under the impression that Police HQ was akin to the celestial abodes and that the Commissioner was some sort of unapproachable – if not untouchable – being.
Are people expected to keep a respectful silence and genuflect before the Commissioner then? Like a sort of high priest in HIS temple?
YES! Admission to the “Holy of holies” is permissible only once a year and only to the High Priest himself.
“The Police this afternoon defended their decision to request phone logs in the ongoing controversy over a meeting between the Chief of Staff at the Ministry of Home Affairs and a man who was wrongly accused of a hold-up, saying the request was made as part of investigations into alleged attempted corruption of a witness by a police officer.” (The Times)
The alleged corruption of a witness by a police office has got nothing to do with Silvio Scerri and iz-Zambi. Has information obtained for one case been used for another incident? Or am I wrong?
Meanwhile, the reasons behind the campaign against bendy-buses is becoming clearer.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130828/local/old-route-buses-back-in-service.483895
Can Labour publish the details of its hidden commitments with the old bus owners?
Can the opposition request a public enquiry by an independent magistrate (if there is one left) on the causes of the recent fires on board bendy buses?
One fire is an accident, two are a coincidence and three are…….arson maybe?
How is it that after two years on the roads, bendy buses deceided to start going up in flames just this week.
The majority of comments on timesofmalta are from drivers of other cars and not regular commuters who should be the judges on quality of service.
Usual lopsided, or is it one-sided moderation and coverage by timesofmalta in its holy crusade against Arriva which started just after contract was awarded.
With this police commissioner I have no trust in the police.
If he can’t stand the heat he should avoid being in the kitchen.
This is the 21st century and such behaviour is unacceptable by the police commissioner who seems to have lost control of the situation.
Not answering a journalist’s question was considered to be unacceptable by the Labour opposition a few months ago.
They are getting a new kitchen out of the profit they made when serving food at Girgenti. He will be comfortable there.
http://newsroom.fb.com/News/699/Global-Government-Requests-Report
Malta made 89 requests in the first six months of this year.
What an ARROGANT attitude.
Thank you, Ivan Camilleri, for shredding your vote before the last election.
Here we go. Unemployment already on the rise. All relatively well-run institutions now ill-run by incompetent political appointees.
Here we have the police force in disarray, now run by another incompetent political appointee, bowing to a Minister who consorts with criminals. Appointed by a clueless boy who plays on cruise ships as the Middle East is about to explode.
Expect the worse. It has only just begun.
“Qeghdin god-depot” of a Malta Labour Party state police force where detained suspects are killed even though the former MLP Commissioner of Police produced a clutch of affidavits swearing falsely that the suspect had escaped from custody.
Nothing to boast about but plentiful reason why journalists are not welcome.
“Qeghdin god-depot” – always the sancta sanctorum of a Labour administration.
I still recall, with horror and disgust, the sight of notorious criminals making their merry way to the “Other Ranks” mess inside the Police GHQ to plot and to be entertained there, when I was the Police Medical Officer during the early days of the Mintoff administration, and before I was illegally compulsorily retired.
We are fast approaching the day when it will again be difficult to distinguish between cops and robbers, something that is already suggested by Zambi’s inside the Ministry for the Police etc.
You mean the central control centre of any Labour administration.
Power is where force can be applied.
@Josef
The “central control station” was always Il-Macina or Castille in Labour days. The Police GHQ was only the substation where adjutants and C of Ps were upbraided for using submachine guns as paperweights in the august paranoid presence of the MLP prime minister. The Police GHQ also housed the torture chambers of those police.
The Tower of London as opposed to Whitehall .
What is so offensive is the arrogant way the Commissioner, after waving his admonishing finger in the reporter’s face, rudely covered the microphone and pushed it down.
If this is the way they treat the press, imagine how they will treat the common citizen who happens to fall into their clutches.
The Commissioner admonishing the reporter with this air of ”you know who I am” was offensive, however the comment by an officer shouting that here we are in the Depot, is much more worrying.
What astonishes me is the FACT that all this has already been experienced before and yet we get surprises. What the hell do you expect?
Isn’t it time we stopped calling it “Depot”? That’s a British Army term for a regiment’s recruiting area, and shows us up for the embarrassingly illiterate wogs that we are. It’s Police Headquarters.
Id-depot means something else and it’s not police headquarters.
It’s where the rule of law becomes an obstacle to overcome in the name of government, the courts being the adversary to beat.
You miss the irony, Baxxter. Everything has a purpose, even a misnomer.
You are incredibly stupid, aren’t you?
The Commissioner of Police has every right to avoid answering the pertinent questions of journalists but he must also understand that there will be a very big price to pay for any arrogant evasiveness. That bill will have to be paid by him, the police force of which he is head and the politicians who dragged him out of peaceful retirement to fill the unbearably hot seat of police commissioner during Labour days.