Wouldn’t the minister’s car have been equipped with radio contact to Police HQ?
Published:
December 8, 2014 at 3:23pm
I feel a little awkward ringing people to badger them for information on this on a public holiday, so maybe somebody out there knows.
Wouldn’t the police minister’s car have been equipped with a radio allowing direct contact with the police, especially given that he has what he calls ‘a security driver’?
This would be like the police have, or drivers working for large delivery organisations, courier services and taxi companies.
And if it does have radio contact in the car, why didn’t the driver use that instead of using his phone to ring 112?
31 Comments Comment
Or call the Minister directly on his cell phone.
One would imagine he would have his Minister’s number (considering they are on “Siehbi” basis).
Considering that the driver was babysitting Mallia’s daughter, there must be another way which he uses to contact the Minister besides going through 112.
What if the child was ill or wanted to speak to her parents? It would be daft to assume that the driver would ask 112 to put him through.
It all boils down to why Sheehan said ‘doktor’. Was he on another phone with the Minister? Is this why only the conclusion of the inquiry will be published?
He knew the calls would be recorded?
As far as i know you are told beforehand that the call will be recorded
Exactly
I have no clue what Sheehan normally sounds like, however there is an edge to his voice which belies the situation:
1. A discomfort in talking to control room, other than the explanation he is giving which he doesn’t appear hesitant about.
2. A discomfort of status. Was he marginalised by colleagues already prior to this incident?
Sheehan was continuously in contact with Mallia. That’s what he meant when he said ‘qieghed mal-ministru’
Mallia was in the know all the time in real time.
Contacting the control room by phone works better than by radio. Traditionally, it was also considered to be more private (well).
So if Sheehan was on the phone with the commissioner and was aware that the minister was close by, it is not out of the ordinary for him to ask to speak to him. There might also have been mobile to mobile calls, certainly.
If you are still thinking on the lines that the government leaked staged conversations, you need to see your heads, really.
Talk about conspiracy theory! I can assure that what you deem to be ‘conspiracy theories’ on a global scale are built on sounder evidence and no speculation. But then you will never come to this because at a global level you all live in a bubble where official information is deceptive and no questions are asked.
[Daphne – Let’s rephrase that, Kevin. 1. The government definitely leaked the transcript that was published yesterday morning in The Sunday Times and Malta Today. That’s why only those two newspapers got it at the same time and that’s why the Police Minister’s communications officer promoted the resulting The Sunday Times story on Facebook. 2. When I say that conversation was ‘staged’, I do not mean it was staged for the leak, but that it was staged and rehearsed for the purposes of the press release, because there had obviously been prior conversations during which the Commissioner of Police obtained the real details from his constable. In that transcript, it is clear that the Commissioner of Police is prompting his constable and then dictating to the PM’s spokesman.]
I cannot see why “the government definitely leaked the transcript”. How ‘definite’ is this? Did I miss anything, or are you simply assuming?
[Daphne – Jahasra, Kevin. I work in the press.]
The commissioner prompted Sheehan for answers, yes, but I see nothing strange here. And if the commissioner knew that this was to be leaked, well then why would he come out as the originator of the ‘warning shots’ lie? (In the first released transcript Sheehan tells the commissioner ‘mhux fuqu ta [sparajt]’, which implies warning shots)
If it was a predetermined leak then it did not help much, that’s for sure.
[Daphne – We are agreed on your last line. The Commissioner didn’t know it would be leaked. I never said the call was staged to be leaked. This was an authentic call made that same night when they were organising a cover-up. They planned for the cover-up to succeed, which means they were not thinking ‘leaks when the cover-up fails, to save our skins’.
What I DID say is that they are all being very careful precisely because those calls are routinely recorded and this is a call the Commissioner made himself. You will have noticed that all the other calls recorded through the control room, which have been leaked and published, are calls SHEEHAN MADE and which they had to answer. The calls which will really tell us what happened are the ones that they would have made mobile to mobile to avoid the control room recording system.
The government leaked that one call the Commissioner made because it occurred to them just now that they could present it as the Commissioner having been the one to put ‘warning shots’ into the notes Kurt Farrugia was taking down. Kurt and Ramona leaked it to ‘save’ Kurt. They haven’t the nous to work out that a PM spokesman taking dictation from a Police Commissioner is far bigger an offence than lying about warning shots.]
Okay, that makes more sense. Yes, it is possible.
I don’t agree with you.
It was Sheehan’s mobile phone that was tapped and not the police control room.
If it was a case of the Control Room conversations being tapped then we would not hear the ‘hold the line’ jingles whilst Seehan was trying to get through.
It was not like his call was put on hold but this happened before he even happened to talk to someone. If it’s the case of Sheehan’s phone being tapped then we shall be hearing the conversations he had with Mallia soon.
[Daphne Groan. Control room calls are not ‘tapped’. They are recorded. That’s why there is a ‘this call is being recorded’ notice. When calls are recorded, they can be leaked. Where does tapping come into it? And if Sheehan’s phone were ‘tapped’, the PN media would have obtained all his calls and not just those made to the control room.]
In the call released by Malta Today there is not one single background noise.
Compare all the other 5 calls…you will hear cars driving under the tunnel, police radios and passersby talking.
I cannot help noticing that the three-way phone call transcript carried in The Sunday Times yesterday is the only one where the control room is calling PC533, not the other way round. That makes me think it is ‘staged’.
I may be lost in the transcript labyrinth, but if this was truly leaked by the government then I gather this is the full version of the one leaked by the PN media, no?
[Daphne – They are all different phone calls. The government leaked just one: the one the Commmissioner of Police deliberately made through the control room to Paul Sheehan. All the other calls are calls Sheehan made TO the control room and were leaked, clearly, by a whistleblower to the PN media.]
He had a gun, but not a radio?
Here’s a scenario. Minister plus daughter are both in the car with Sheehan. Smith turns up unexpectedly.
There’s an outstanding deal pending conclusion. Words are said. It gets ugly.
Sheehan loses control, panics and calls the Control Room. “Il-Ministru mieghi”. After he hangs up, Sheehan gets an earful from the Minister. Mallia leaves the car. Calls Pawlu il-Machine Gun to pick him up. Instructs Sheehan to call Control Room and ask them to put him through to the Minister “who is at the Depo”.
He does this once, twice, thrice… Mallia now has an alibi as he knows full well that Control Room calls are recorded.
Of course the car has radio access. Of course Sheehan has radio access. How can they not? And why hassle with the Control Room to put him through to the Minister while they both have access to a mobile phone?
It is nothing but a charade to give Mallia an alibi.
Has anyone been able to confirm that this “official” function at the Depo really happen??
We have been asking what the social occasion at Police Headquarters was and who was invited besides Mallia, from day one, but no details were ever given.
@Curious
You need to do a Mintoff.
You say:
“Instructs Sheehan to call Control Room and ask them to put him through to the Minister “who is at the Depo”.
He does this once, twice, thrice… Mallia now has an alibi as he knows full well that Control Room calls are recorded.”
You forgot:
“Policewoman taking the call tells Sheehan that the Minister will call him back or that he should call the Minister later.”
That should punch a small hole in the alibi because the Minister cannot be confirmed as being at the depot through independent objective means.
Ezatt!
I agree with you 100%. That is exactly what I suspect happened.
Manuel Mallia is an expert in this field and knows exactly what he has to do to clear himself from the criminal scene.
So Sheehan is actually Manuel Mallia’s boss? Because the alternative is too terrible to contemplate.
I think it would be very wrong for ministerial cars to be equipped with police radios, both for technical reasons as well as more important ones such as having the minister too close to actual operations on the ground.
Apart from police vehicles the only other vehicles that could or should have police radios are emergency vehicles.
Two way radios should only be used by people trained to use them as an inexperienced user can cause havoc to vital communications. Such radio systems have inherently low capacity because they broadcast rather than connect to a specific person as a mobile phone would.
That said, from what one hears in these telephone calls, there seems to be more than enough lack of experience to cause havoc as it is.
We are talking radios – not police radios. Of course, Sheehan knows how to use one.
But only because he happens to be a policeman as well.
Ministers’ drivers aren’t normally policemen so there is no reason why ministerial cars per se should have a police radio installed.
The point is not so much what equipment should be in the car but what line of communication should or should not be available to the minister and his driver.
I would see it as very wrong for a minister, or his driver to have a hotline of sorts to police operations. There is no reason why a minister should have such a privilege any more than you or I should.
Wouldn’t it also make sense that minister’s cars (as well as police cars) have satellite tracking?
It would have saved them the farce of the fifth phone call trying to locate the scene of the incident.
[Daphne – That’s the last thing they’d want. No more skappaturi or secret deals.]
The extent of the cover up makes sense, if it was Manuel Mallia that found himself in the trigger-happy position of shooter.
First we unravelled the cover up, now the potentially staged alibi.
It takes a seasoned pro to orchestrate all this in an hour.
May I humbly ask the whereabouts of Silvio Scerri for these last two weeks?
He is keeping a low profile not to get sucked into this mess.
Probably busy decorating the lights at Dar il-Mediterran for his master minister Emmanuel Mallia to enjoy while hearing Albano and Romina singing.