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VI. Failure of Police Response

The primary functions of the Police Force are . . . (a) to preserve peace and good order in the country; and (b) to maintain and, as necessary, enforce the law in an impartial and objective manner.
—Constitution of the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, sec. 197

The Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary, the official name of the national police in Papua New Guinea, should be the first body to investigate and punish police violence. This rarely happens. There is almost no willingness on the part of the police to investigate or prosecute its members. With little or no penalty for violators, human rights training for police has had little effect. The failure of police response to abuses documented in this report are part of a broader problem in which the police force is largely unaccountable to the rest of government, increasingly ineffective, under-resourced, and completely undisciplined.

Structure of the Police Force

Under the Constitution, the commissioner of police is responsible for “the superintendence, efficient organization and control of the Force.”²⁹¹ The Constitution specifically provides that “the members of the Police Force are not subject to direction or control by any person outside the Force” in their powers “to lay, prosecute or withdraw charges in respect of offences.”²⁹² While the Constitution creates a ministerial post to deal with policing, the minister is only empowered to formulate broad police policy and has no power of command within the force.²⁹³ While such independence serves important functions, it may also prevent accountability for crimes committed by police.

The police administrative headquarters is located in Port Moresby with the country divided into five divisional commands, each with a divisional commander. In addition, each of the nineteenprovinces has its own provincial police commander and provincial police headquarters.²⁹⁴ The size, structure, and deployment of the regular police force has remained more or less unchanged since independence, despite the population’s having more than doubled, rising crime rates, and changes in social and economic conditions.²⁹⁵ In 2002, it was found that “[t]he deployment and use of police resources throughout the country bears no relationship to levels of reported crime.”²⁹⁶

As of September 2004, the commissioner of police commanded 5,250 regular officers, a police-to-population ratio of 1:1,121.²⁹⁷ The force has supplemented its numbers with some 4,200 reserve and auxiliary police, drawn from local communities, who receive far less training and less paythan regular police.²⁹⁸ In practice, the distinctions between reserve, auxiliary, and regular police have become blurred, and reserve and auxiliary police are now a major part of operational policing.²⁹⁹ Auxiliary police and reserves often wear regular police uniforms without names tags and, thus, may not be distinguishable from regular police.³⁰⁰ Even counting reserve and auxiliary officers, Papua New Guinea’s ratio of police to population falls below the 1:450 recommended by the U.N.and that of neighboring countries.³⁰¹ Women constituted only 5.4 percent of the uniformed police force in May 2003.³⁰² Most police are stationed in urban areas and live in barracks separate from the community; many rural areas are far from the nearest police station.

Problems with the Performance of Basic Duties

The effectiveness of the Constabulary is in a state of serious decline, and the pace of deterioration is accelerating.
—Institute of National Affairs, Government of Papua New Guinea, Report of the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary Administrative Review Committee to the Minister for Internal Security Hon. Bire Kimisopa, September 2004, p. 49.

The police, described as being “the most crippled of any government agency” when handed from Australia to Papua New Guinea at independence,³⁰³ do not operate in all parts of the country.  In their existing operations, they have been strongly criticized for failing to perform basic policing tasks. These include preventing crime, keeping records, conducting investigations, and prosecuting cases.³⁰⁴ A 2002 government study funded by AusAID found “that the law and justice system has become less and less capable of arresting and convicting criminals” and that institutions of justice are not acting as a deterrent to crime.³⁰⁵ The chances of being arrested for committing a crime are low, and lower the more serious the crime: “Nationally, there is a better than even chance of not being arrested for a major crime. In Port Moresby, there is almost a two in three chance of not being arrested.”³⁰⁶ Even when arrests are made, “[a]t least one quarter of all criminal cases fail because of mistakes.”³⁰⁷ Sinclair Dinnen suggests that the result “is a marked lack of deterrence and an environment where the rewards of crime generally outweigh the costs.”³⁰⁸

The 2002 study concluded that police rely heavily on a retributive style of policing and on “confessions as the primary, if not exclusive, means of proving their case.”³⁰⁹ In response to periodic crises in law and order, the government has employed states of emergency, curfews, and special policing operations, such as military-style raids on villages and urban settlements to capture suspects and prison escapees.³¹⁰ Police raids in particular have often led to civil claims against the state for compensation for physical abuse and indiscriminate destruction of property, costing the state monies it desperately needs for other activities.³¹¹ According to Sinclair Dinnen, “In practice, it has often been difficult to distinguish between the retributive actions of police in certain areas and those of the so-called criminals.”³¹² Civil claims against the state are discussed below.

Although victims interviewed by Human Rights Watch described abuses by all kinds of police officers, from traffic police to reserve and auxiliary police, the latter two have been especially blamed for violence and other illegal acts.³¹³ For example, a 2002 report found that: “The Reserve and Community Auxiliary Police have become a burden rather than a benefit to policing. They are a poorly disciplined, trained and supervised force whose existence and behavior seriously undermine the role, integrity and performance of regular police. Successive Constabulary administrations have failed to act on reported problems.”³¹⁴

Victims in both rural and urban areas also singled out task forces and mobile squads, which are in theory composed of regular police, for their extreme brutality. The head of the police force’s internal affairs directorate explained how task forces operate: “A task force is a rapid response unit initially made by a commander who formed them for a particular objective, then disbanded them. But they’ve stayed over the years and are still carrying on.”³¹⁵ Mobile squads³¹⁶ exist in both rural and urban areas; according to an assistant police commissioner: “They are primarily responsible for suppressing public disorder. In each regional center we have a mobile squad. For example, in the Highlands, they take on tribal fighting, elections.”³¹⁷ Mobile squads are the frequent targets of complaints, and individuals we interviewed described mobile squads raiding villages and urban settlements, burning houses, killing pigs, destroying gardens, and beating and sexually assaulting residents.³¹⁸ According to the head of internal affairs: “Most complaints come about the mobile squads because they are the group that goes into the thick of things and people are more litigious nowadays. In the urban areas, it’s the task force and the traffic cops—extorting money and setting up false road blocks to extort money to buy alcohol.”³¹⁹

Police officers have also been accused of regularly committing a range of disciplinary and criminal offenses other than the acts of violence detailed in this report. These include robbery, destruction of property, corruption, and drinking alcohol on duty.³²⁰ And a 2003 gender analysis of the law and justice sector agencies found discrimination against women police officers in placement, promotion, training, and benefits.³²¹ According to the study, policewomen reported that they were frequently sexually harassed, that the internal discipline process was gender biased, that domestic violence was prevalent in police barracks, and that reports of domestic violence were not taken seriously.³²² While beyond the scope of this report, these acts are important to note, as they are part of the climate of lawlessness and impunity in which the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary functions. Moreover, infractions such as the consumption of alcohol and drugs on duty contribute to violence, and many of the victims we interviewed told us that the officers involved were drunk.³²³

Causes of Ineffectiveness and Violence

Studies by the government and international bodies point to a range of causes for police ineffectiveness and police crime. These include inadequate training and supervision;³²⁴ the failure to pay the salaries of regular, reserve, and auxiliary police, resulting in their collecting and pocketing illegal fines, committing theft, and working as unregulated private security guards where they may also commit abuses;³²⁵ the failure to allocate the most basic resources needed for policing, such as notebooks, fuel, and cameras; the colonial origins of the police as a “reactive paramilitary force” for the purpose of imposing government control, not protecting the population;³²⁶ and the recruitment of young men “with known criminal propensities” as auxiliary police, under the idea that this will prevent them from committing crimes.³²⁷ Other factors include a culture of “paybacks” in which police fear retaliation for reporting on a colleague and “bigmen” that encourages strong arm tactics, as well as a wantok system that demands loyalty to one’s clan or family group over all other obligations. Police also appeared to beat and torture children to get confessions and to punish them, especially because the conviction rate is low. Bruce Grant, head of protection for UNICEF in Papua New Guinea, who has been involved in reforming the juvenile justice system,explained: “You can’t do an investigation if your wantok is involved. So there is a lack of political will, a lack of recourses, a lack of commitment for follow-up, and no mechanisms.”³²⁸

Moreover, numerous studies have found that widespread police violence actually impairs police performance, eroding public trust and confidence, and making many people reluctant to cooperate with investigations and fearful of encountering them even to report crime.³²⁹ As a result, according to Sinclair Dinnen, the failure of police to conduct good criminal investigations is “in part a reflection that the community won’t cooperate because they are scared and dissatisfied. So the police tend to operate in a primitive way, partly out of frustration and partly to get a result that they can’t get by more professional means.”³³⁰

Impunity for Police

Discipline is in a state of almost total collapse.
—Institute of National Affairs, Government of Papua New Guinea, Report of the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary Administrative Review Committee to the Minister for Internal Security Hon. Bire Kimisopa, September 2004, p. 37.

One of the most glaring causes of police violence is near complete impunity for officers and for commanders who participate, order, or ignore it. The 2004 administrative review of the police found that “public confidence in the effectiveness of current disciplinary review machinery is at such a low level that many complaints against the police are no longer reported.”³³¹

According to police policies, the first place that police officers who commit the abuses described in this report should face sanction is within the force itself. These include criminal and administrative charges.

Juvenile court officers can assist in monitoring how police treat children, but their presence is limited and, because they report complaints back to the police themselves, reply on the police to impose sanctions. As a volunteer juvenile court officer explained, “I have the authority to tell police to stop beating someone and to refer the person to the police commander. I’ve never done this but I have been told in the workshop by the Attorney General’s office that I can. But they are careful not to beat people in front of us.”³³² A member of the Juvenile Justice Working Group also noted that having juvenile court officers will not stop the police from beating up a child before an officer gets to the station.³³³ Moreover, if juvenile court officers do report abuse a commanding officer, their reports must result in good faith investigations and appropriate sanctions by police in order to have effect.

The Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary’s internal affairs directorate is responsible for public complaints against the force.³³⁴ The Enhanced Cooperation Programme between Australia and Papua New Guinea, discussed below, is providing support to this office.  According to the internal affairs directorate, from January 1, 2004, to September 15, 2004, no police officers were convicted of crimes and none were imprisoned.³³⁵ Local criminal investigation divisions handle criminal investigations, with the internal affairs directorate responsible, in theory, for oversight. In practice, the directorate reports, the “director internal affairs is only occasionally consulted about the progress of criminal investigations against police and only occasionally advised of the outcome of the case.”³³⁶

Human Rights Watch interviewed criminal investigation officers in Wewak and Alotau and the head of the sexual offenses squad in Kokopo about investigations and prosecutions of police. The officer in Wewak was unable to provide us information on his province.³³⁷In Kokopo, the head of the sexual offenses squad said that he had brought two criminal cases against police officers for sexually abusing girls in custody in the last three years.³³⁸ The officer in Alotau told us that his office had handled “a couple” of cases, one of which had been against him.³³⁹ In 2004, he said, while he was in his current position, he was charged with “brutality and assault.” “I got frustrated and I punched someone,” he explained. “I paid a fine. It wasn’t very serious. I slapped someone in the face. I had a two hundred kina [U.S.$64] fine. . . . It was a silly mistake. It was a lesson for me.” When we asked about the other cases, he replied, “I cannot give you the actual more serious ones because they’ve not been reported. The more serious ones don’t get reported.” When asked why, he replied, “They tell us. We set up a time for an interview, but then they don’t seem to be interested in pursuing the case. They disappear and hide away. Maybe they are threatened by policemen.” When asked what kind of evidence he would amass to compile a case, he told us he would advise victims to get a medical certificate from the hospital and take statements from victims and witnesses. “If the matter is fresh,” he explained, “we need photographs of bruises, etc.” but the station had no camera. The officer told us that he had handled only one complaint from a child, on August 22, 2003. He explained how he responded:

I interviewed this young fellow, but I didn’t know his witnesses so I told him to identify his witnesses to me but he never did. I suppose if he’s really concerned about his case, he should come back and assist me with my investigation. He gave all the work to me and went away and expects me to do the work. Then I see they’re not concerned about the case, so I just sit down.

He was fourteen years old. He was assaulted by the police. He alleges the police took money from him. I cannot take this as fact. When I asked him for witnesses, he went away and didn’t come back.

He also described another case from 2003 in which a woman complained that police officers were asking her for sex. “It wasn’t very serious like rape,” he explained. He told us that he “found insufficient evidence to pursue it criminally. . . . I couldn’t go anywhere because the policemen here were not cooperative. I got stuck.” Instead, he “recommended that she get a lawyer.”³⁴⁰

In Port Moresby, Human Rights Watch interviewed a man who tried to complain when police and university security officers severely beat a group of boys, including his fourteen-year-old son, with sticks and crowbars (“pins bars”) in August 2004.³⁴¹ Many of the boys were wounded, including the man’s son, who suffered a head injury. The next day, said the man, he went to the community police officer at Waigani police station seeking recourse. Rather than opening an investigation, the officer advised him to hire a lawyer or form a community group to seek funding, neither of which he had been able to do.³⁴²

In addition to criminal charges, police officers should face administrative charges for breaches of discipline. The 2004 administrative review of the police found that the police disciplinary manual is good and clear but is not being enforced; the working group for the review found that that the Code of Ethics is of “high standard” but “is almost universally ignored, as are the requirements of the Police Force Act.³⁴³ Charges for disciplinary offenses are handled by the police force’s internal affairs division, with a final decision made by the police commissioner.³⁴⁴ Penalties for disciplinary offenses include a caution, fine, demotion in rank, and dismissal from the force. Police force policy requires dismissal when a member “has been found guilty of using unlawful violence that results in injury to the victim.”³⁴⁵ According to the internal affairs directorate, from January 1, 2004, to September 15, 2004, the directorate issued forty-two caution notices, forty-one reprimand notices, and sixty-five good work notices. Thirty eight members were dismissed from the force, eighteen demoted, 163 suspended, 127 unsuspended, and 157 otherwise penalized for serious disciplinary offenses.³⁴⁶ However, many of the directorate’s decisions had not been implemented: of these cases, seventy-three notices of penalties had not been served as of September 2004, and there was a backlog of 1,410 cases.³⁴⁷

The head of internal affairs explained:

During early 2003 the Internal Affairs Directorate conducted a review of all Serious Disciplinary Offence Reports (SDOR’s) dating back to 1998 and discovered that many police were still committing the same criminal offense and serious breaches of discipline as they were 5-10 years ago. It was also found that the two most common denominators were the consumption of intoxicating liquor by police on duty and failure by supervisors to effectively supervise their subordinates.³⁴⁸

The 2004 administrative review of the police places responsibility for the lack of accountability squarely on police management:

Failure of supervisors to prevent criminal behavior or serious breaches of discipline, or at least deal with it appropriately at the time, has reached a crisis. . . . Supervisors do not accept or exercise appropriate responsibility and are not held accountable for the performance of their command, or not adequately censured for failing to ensure discipline in their staff. . . .

It was reported to the Committee from a variety of sources that, within some parts of Police management, there exists an influential and negative culture which appears to condone and/or protect corrupt behaviour and criminal conduct (including serious assaults) committed by police. The Committee was told that many officers are compromised and believe they are unable to act against this situation without genuine fear of retribution.³⁴⁹

While not every police officer is guilty of the acts described in this report, the problem is so widespread that various government-sponsored reviews have concluded that before anything else, including increasing the size of the force, discipline is needed.³⁵⁰ These studies also conclude that without discipline being restored, additional resources will have little effect.³⁵¹ Indeed, the 2004 administrative review of the police found that the systems and process are in place to make substantial improvement in discipline without additional costs.³⁵² The failure, the review concluded, has been in political will.³⁵³

The Failure of Police Training

Although not a solution by itself, police training is an important tool for addressing human rights violations by police. From 2000-2005, AusAID’s police project funded more than 2,000 workshops, and trainees included around 75 percent of all reserve and auxiliary police.³⁵⁴According to AusAID, “the project did not provide training that specifically targeted human rights,” but “human rights issues were addressed in the context of other training,” on tropics such as “Use of force and weapons, International Law, Accountability, Discipline and Ethics, and Cell and Custody Procedures.”³⁵⁵ The ICRC also trained police in human rights and humanitarian law.³⁵⁶ AusAID contractors told Human Rights Watch that they had trained police in Papua New Guineaon, among other things, children’s rights under the Convention on the Rights of the Child,³⁵⁷ although the materials they showed us contained only abstract principles of law. The assistant police commissioner told us that they had “educated all our policemen on the requirements of the amended Juvenile Courts Act” but that through 2004, there was “no special training at the police college for dealing with juveniles.”³⁵⁸ The new police juvenile justice policy states that specialized courses will be developed to train all police officers on working with children.³⁵⁹

However, it is widely agreed that training up to this point has produced little reduction in police violence against children.³⁶⁰ “Police are very aware—police who beat really know they are doing the wrong thing, so they don’t need more basic human rights education,” explained Abby McLeod.³⁶¹ The head of criminal investigations in Wewak told Human Rights Watch that AusAID had trained officers there on arrest procedures in August 2004 and “they now know when to use force. . . . In interviews you can’t punch someone.” But earlier in our conversation he told us that task force officers hit people during interrogation.³⁶² Similarly, in Kokopo we saw signs, posted directly in front of the cell where children were detained with adults, stating that juveniles must be separated from adults. A high-level AusAID staff member in Port Moresby elaborated:

The RPNG [Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary] are the most highly-trained police force in the Pacific. But change on the ground is limited. . . . We’ve contributed a large amount of money and still it’s difficult to see the impact. There has been impact in terms of outputs—training delivered, an increase in organizational capacity—but real change to police on the ground: generally it’s felt that things haven’t changed.³⁶³

When we asked why the training has produced so few results, most responses fell in two categories: that current training has failed to address the overall institutional culture of policing methods, and that there are few penalties for violating the training or incentives to follow it. First, we were told that current training does not address police culture and or the fundamental way police operate. A policeman in Eastern Highlands Province explained to an NGO/UNICEF researcher in 2004 that “new recruits get into these practices [using women and girls kept in custody for sex] having learnt from those before them.” According to the researcher’s report, the officer “says it is now a ‘tradition’ in the police force and is accepted as normal by most policemen.”³⁶⁴

Bruce Grant further explained:

Training that has been developed doesn’t match the needs of operational police. It may be sound theory, but it doesn’t help them do a better job. It doesn’t go to the heart of the issue—that it’s okay to bash or rape someone. Police really believe in the notion that it’s okay to burn down someone’s house.³⁶⁵

Similarly, Sinclair Dinnen noted that “[t]here does appear to be an institutionalized culture deeply embedded in the force and training and workshops held have not come to grips with it.”³⁶⁶ The working group for the 2004 administrative review of the police concluded that “[i]t is difficult to identify whether the problems stem from the wrong kind of training or from a paralysing apathy because they have never been provided with the resources or support necessary to manage or because they have been unable to change corrupt practices.”³⁶⁷

Second, police who do not follow the training are rarely punished; those who do are often unsupported. Abby McLeod, when asked why training has not worked, explained: “You can get away with it—there’s impunity, a backlog of complaints. . . . Punishment is the key.³⁶⁸ Bruce Grant agreed: “I don’t know if training is the issue if you lack the political will to enforce the idea that this kind of violence is unacceptable.”³⁶⁹ Sinclair Dinnen suggested that external monitoring would be required to make training effective: “External monitoring is needed because it’s very difficult to get police to change despite years of training. [There’s a] need to monitor and punish.”³⁷⁰ An AusAID official in Canberra also pointed out that police who do try to follow their training receive little support:

There are a lot of police who are actually good but are within a flawed structure. . . . A lot of officers do understand the issues, but it doesn’t get applied because they aren’t supported to apply it. For example, they work for their M.P. [member of parliament] or a business or their boss. There’s no individual accountability. There is all of this capacity but it’s not being applied.³⁷¹

Police urgently need training that directly addresses violence and its current use as a fundamental part of policing. Training must also be accompanied by consequences for failing to follow it, which as present are sorely lacking. However, as explained elsewhere in this section, current practices go far beyond a need for training alone, and require a reform of management and discipline throughout the force.

The 2004 Administrative Review of the Police

In 2004, an administrative review committee commissioned by the minister for internal security, Bire Kimisopa, issued a report finding a breakdown of discipline and loss of integrity that has destroyed public confidence in the police and rendered them “largely ineffective.” The committee also found “lack of demonstrable government will and commitment to effective law enforcement and wider related issues of broad community safety and an effective, sustainable, law, order and justice framework.”

The Committee, which was commissioned in response to a growing breakdown in law and order, and serious discipline and morale problems in the police, held consultations with the police, the private sector, community groups, and individuals. It reported that there was considerable consensus about what the problems were and the actions needed. The committee made a detailed series of recommendations that, if acted upon, would go a long way towards reforming the police. Among other things, the committee recommended the following:

• the creation of the position of a special police ombudsman
• various practical measures to enforce the existing disciplinary code
• the publication of an annual report on police reporting the outcomes of investigations of complaints against them
• the termination of all reserve and auxiliary police with invitations to reapply based on new standards
• the reform of mobile squads and task forces
• that police wear proper uniforms and nametags
• the review of police pay and allowances
• the improvement of leadership and training
• more effective use of existing resources, including police vehicles, improved financial management
• immunity for past corrupt behavior and malpractice but not serious corruption or acts of serious criminal violence
• that police be more responsive to domestic violence and sex abuse, including within the force

Minister Kimisopa subsequently announced plans to disband a task force in Port Moresby and reorganize mobile squads in the Highlands, citing as one reason that the cost of successful lawsuits against the state for police actions.³⁷²  In June 2005, the police commissioners and other officers accepted the committee’s report and agreed to create teams to implement the recommendations.³⁷³ However, full implementation of the report’s recommendations will require significant political will and resources that have yet to be demonstrated.