Sergeant Lee Roy Balzan – shocking
Sergeant Lee Roy Balzan being taken to court under arrest. He was held on remand until being allowed out on bail yesterday. The police officer sitting next to him is significant: he is Sandro Camilleri, head of the police union and new favourite of the Labour government. As head of the police union he should be defending Sergeant Balzan’s interests. Instead he is helping in his abusive arrest and is the prosecuting officer.
It emerged in court yesterday that Sergeant Lee Roy Balzan, who has protested vehemently from the start that he wasn’t even at the station when the arrest report was deleted, was charged and arraigned in court BEFORE the police checked the CCTV footage.
That footage shows a man which is unmistakably him (his face doesn’t show but his shape, size, height and gait are his, he is wearing a policeman’s uniform, and that station isn’t exactly populous) leaving the station and walking towards Sergeant Balzan’s house around 20 minutes BEFORE the arrest report was deleted.
The investigating officers themselves said in court yesterday that the man really resembles him.
nd wow, what do you know, he’s even dressed as a policeman.
This is shocking.
He had insisted from the start that they check the footage and they didn’t.
They put him through that hell, he was held in prison for days, he is still having to go through the pre-trial process (and might even have to go to actual trial) and now they tell us that they have finally bothered to check the footage and, oh, look, somebody who looks remarkably like Sergeant Balzan is right there leaving the station before the deletion occurred at the station.
They make me sick. And frightened – for yes, this abuse of power is really frightening. Let’s say that at a push that man leaving the station was not Sergeant Balzan but a doppelganger he kept beneath his desk at the station for such eventualities. Still, shouldn’t the CCTV footage have been the investigating officers’ first port of call?
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I hope and pray that the new Police Commissioner will carry out a thorough investigation on the whole Police Force, starting from ‘Siehbi’ Assistant Commissioner Zammit down to every police officer.
Hope he’ll also find the time to investigate about some bank accounts running into millions of euros being held in Switzerland by persons close to the police force.
What will the new Commmissioner of Police do about this frame-up?
He cannot lose our respect as his two predecessors did, and this for more reasons than one. Firstly because of his impeccable reputation and secondly for our own sake.
This will be a test for the new police commissioner.
LET US SEE IF HE HAS BALLS.
“Impeccable” is pushing it.
Quite
Ha naraw il-frame-ups hux ha jergghu jibdew jghollu rashom.
If it turns out that it is not a frame-up – a frame-up implies the arraignment of a person when it is known to those arraigning that the person is either innocent or that there is not sufficient evidence to prove his guilt – it nevertheless looks at this stage very much like a case involving gross negligence on the part of the investigators.
If a person’s rights have been violated in consequence of that negligence, the police are liable in damages, including probably moral damages for illegal arrest and detention. And you and I will have to foot the bill.
How can the head of the police union be the prosecuting officer when the one being prosecuted IS a police officer?
Is this another conflict of interest which everyone will say does not exist?
Where are Franco Debono’s gnashers?
They also said that it’s not uncommon to share passwords between officers.
If that is true the first thing they should do is see to it that such ‘prassijiet’ are abolished immediately and seek IT expert assistance to put in the necessary infrastructure.
If a police officer needs to use the system, she/he should be given access with the necessary permission.
No one should be made to share a password under any circumstance. For one’s own safety, one should not access any secure system unless allowed to have own secret password that can be changed by oneself any time.
If the police did this to one of their own, God only knows what they are willing to do to an ordinary citizen.
It won’t show. Who’s going to believe Ordinary Citizen VS PM?
When that PM has everything at his disposition to continue penalising the victim? On the quiet.
Who does one go to? The Police?
Court? Where we can rely on a lengthy unfolding?
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Whilst we’re on the topic, I think it’s important for a clarification to be made:
What’s the point in “the Government” paying for deeds when people individually and collectively (as a group of individuals) are responsible for any of the acts whilst in office?
If and when there is a suit against Government, personal responsibility and liability needs to be ascertained.
What we had in 1987 was the “behaviour bomb” attached to the succeeding administration instead of to the individuals that made up the former.
It was the NP Government holding office that found itself in the position to pay out in many cases.
This thinking contains a dangerous liability lapsus, if I am correct in this reading of the situation.
Clarity would be nice.
* of paying out
Not only that, but they’ve arrested someone without even bothering to check video evidence which was immediately available and which – at the very least – casts serious doubts on the charges.
We ordinary citizens should start worrying big time.
Who ever you are and what ever you do, you are not safe under Labour.
We need some “serhan il-mohh”.
Every day is a new day with a new revelation – unfortunately, always a shocking one.
I was one of the very first on this blog to express my fear that this was going to end up with a frame-up.
This is what, historically, the MLP in government does when it has its back against the wall and has run out of lies and other obnoxious options.
I sincerely hope that this filthy government of ours does not prove me right.
The 13 December (give and take a day or two) is a notorious day for frame-ups by the Labour Party. Nearly 28 years ago to the day Malta witnessed the shocking frame up on Pietru Pawl Busuttil.
About 6 years ago I was in Gzira, going down Nazju Ellul street, when I noticed several edgy policemen at the side of the road.
By the looks of things they were expecting trouble, as they had barricaded a house with a couple of their police cars.
Sure enough, when I passed by a couple of hours later, I saw that a green Hyundai had driven straight through the barricade and into the front garden of the house, knocking down the boundary wall in the process.
I had a good look, and amazingly it avoided colliding with the police cars by mere millimetres. A shopkeeper nearby told me that the house belonged to a police officer, and the driver of the green Hyundai was a police officer too.
I didn’t see the incident unfold, just the before and after. And a couple of days later the boundary wall was repaired, and it was as if nothing had happened.
And not a word of this appeared in the press. I figured that as the police had successfully hushed it up, they would probably let the aggressor off with a slap on the wrist, as they do when out of the glare of the media spotlight.
My point is that the police flouting the law and protecting one of their own is nothing new. And though it happened under the PN government as well, it strikes me as being a very Laburist/taghna lkoll characteristic.
‘They make me sick. And frightened – for yes, this abuse of power is really frightening.’
This abuse has long been coming, as the new Police Commissioner Michael Cassar has admitted. Let’s see if he’ll do anything about it.
It’s a disgrace that Lawrence Gonzi and Carm Mifsud Bonnici failed to address the situation/ I am bewildered when Gonzi is astonished by the huge and unprecedented electoral loss and Mifsud Bonnici is shocked by a motion against him in Parliament.
The fact the MLP is now in power is a direct consequence of their gross incompetence where it mattered – people’s perceptions.
I remember a shocking strip-searching on two Sliema councillors which created quite a sensation and a negative reaction by top criminal lawyers.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140927/local/-Strip-search-councillors-cleared.537347
They have since been acquitted and while the whole episode stank of a frame-up, particularly when one reads the details and the magistrate’s judgement, no heads seem to have rolled.
This was their perception as many Taghna Lkollers in high positions in public office were feeding them a very different version of what was going on.
Many others were feeding them the reality of the existing situation in the diverse departments but they preferred to believe the wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Politicians make enough excuses for themselves, you don’t have to aid them.
There are times when I don’t agree with you Bob-a-Job.
Carm Mifsud Bonnici and the Nationalist Party already have the dirty goods on Michael Cassar.
And you are waiting to see if he will do anything about it.
Can it be that your information is, on this issue, incomplete?
Can it be that there are different values and time frames that are taken into consideration?
Franco Debono promised action, but hey, would you have gone with that?
Rather slower in the right direction than faster in the wrong one.
When you mention Carm Mifsud Bonnici in this light, is the only time I disagree with your views.
Would you consider that I may know him better than you do?
I will be clearer.
It was up to him to keep the Police in check and instead he never did anything using the excuse that the Police is an autonomous force.
The role of the Minister is clear. He is to ensure that the Police are run in line with the policy of the government of the day while ensuring that they do not abuse their power.
He did non of that. Ergo he’s useless.
Moreover I have experienced this first hand so I ought to know better.
I had considered that, otherwise I would not have written anything.
Your first hand experience is what is different to mine.
I know that the MLP have done their utmost to penalise Carm. One could say from his cradle.
I know that he is not alone amongst the Mifsud Bonnici’s to suffer attack: during the MLP church issue police riots it was a Mifsud Bonnici that the Police had an immediate target on and sent to hospital. Police No 5 was the one who lashed me with a chain on my back that day, but that’s a different story.
Edgar Galea Curmi is also a Mifsud Bonnici and as with Carm, the MLP ostracisation bureau was at work early on – in their lives, not just during the previous administration.
I know that there are agents within the Force that worked for Joseph Muscat from well before the elections in a directly related matter, and I can now identify them.
I know that May 2012 was the cover-up excuse for something else that the MLP needed to nail him for, connected to all their deceit in these elections. From my perspective, it was crucial to their long-term deceit and a far bigger reason to get at him.
I know that Carm was targeted in other manners directly after May 2012.
I know that Carm’s values and Richard Cachia Caruana’s intelligence were, additionally to the above, vital beacons that needed destroying.
I know other bits and pieces.
I suppose it depends on perspective and on what part of the puzzle is visible to you.
More haste, less speed.
“Better” is subjective.
Back to the glorious days of Mintoff, with everyone afraid of the Gestapo police knocking at their door.
To all Sliema ‘switchers’: this shameful frame-up of a Sliema boy took place in the Sliema police station, just on your doorsteps.
This time it was Sgt. Balzan. Next time it could be you. Now how does this make you feel.
Errrm, can the police check who was in the station in those twenty minutes? Anyone walked in, in uniform or not, during those infamous 20 minutes?
Would any of the persons present perhaps be aware of Balzan’s password?
Who would Balzan’s superiors be who are aware of his password?
Excuse my ignorance but does the police force utilise time loggers for their staff as is the practice in other government departments?
This case reminded me of this other one.
Case collapses after drug found to be paracetamol.
A former boxing champion has been cleared of possessing cocaine — after bungling cops in Malta mistook paracetamol for the Class A drug.
Scott Dixon, 38 — who has acted as Hollywood giant Brad Pitt’s body double in the Guy Ritchie film Snatch — was charged by police on the Mediterranean island in 2011 after a sachet of white powder was found on him during a search. However, this week, almost three years after he was arrested, the case against him collapsed.
Expert witness Godwin Scerri told the court that the white powder was not cocaine and had been identified as the over-the-counter painkiller.
http://www.sundaypost.com/news-views/scotland/champ-boxer-cleared-over-cocaine-bust-1.236838
I know it’s stating the obvious but…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVNSQ72wvlc
We , Maltese expect the Commisioner of Police , Cassar to do his duty , be loyal to the constitution , and tell the politicians to f@@k off.
And to – this time round – be honest, in word, actions and follow-through deed, to Interpol.
When labour is in government, it’s like those old western movies where the mayor, the sheriff, the deputy sheriff and the land speculators are all in cahoots to share the spoils.
But then there was also a man (we used to call him l-artist) who brings them down.