By LYNAIRE MUNNINGS 

Tribune Staff Reporter 

lmunnings@tribunemedia.net

NATIONAL Security Minister Wayne Munroe rebuffed assertions that he shifted his tone on the ability of police to investigate themselves when he became a Cabinet minister.

The Nassau Guardian noted yesterday that in 2020, before he was elected to office, Mr Munroe said it was time the country moved toward having independent investigations of police-involved killings.

“It cannot be proper that the body who is investigating this homicide decide whether it is justifiable or not,” he said after police killed three men in June 2020.

After the explosive implications of voice notes purporting to capture a quid-pro-quo arrangement involving a senior police officer and a gang leader, Mr Munroe expressed full support for the police’s ability to investigate the matter despite the public’s wariness of this.

The Security and Intelligence Branch is investigating the matter, and the Police Complaints Inspectorate will oversee the branch, according to Police Commissioner Clayton Fernander.

Yesterday, Mr Munroe suggested his tone is different because he can now implement the changes he wants.

“I have addressed it for six years when I was president of the Bar, and when I came in the chair here, I have the benefit of not talking about it, but doing something about it, and that is the difference of talk,” he said during a press conference yesterday.

“When you don’t have the authority to address something, you complain to the decision-makers. When you have the ability to address it, you cannot complain anymore, you have to address it and that is what we have been doing.

He said he has always had faith in the police force.

 “If you take a view of the performance of the Royal Bahamas Police Force over the decade, they have consistently, when they have found their members falling short, charged them before the court,” he said. “We have policemen right now charged before the courts for homicides, so that gives me faith that it is an institution that is committed to rooting out the bad apples.” 

 Mr Munroe has said the Police Complaints Inspectorate now has administrative support. He noted that a bill is in the works to establish a more robust body to oversee investigations into all security forces.

 Nonetheless, the Inspectorate has no investigators and little is known about what it has done to fulfil its legislative function of supervising the Complaints and Corruption Branch of the force. The body only has five members.

 Mr Munroe could not say whether the Metropolitan Police of the United Kingdom has accepted a request to help investigate matters related to the voice notes.