Police info in court criticised

By ZEDAIAH KANAU
A COMMITTAL court magistrate has raised concerns on the number of times cases have had to be adjourned because of improper or unclear information written on the police information sheet pertaining to the charge against a defendant.
Magistrate Tracy Ganaii of the Waigani Committal Court raised this concern when she was trying to arraign Duncan Gawi, who was charged with causing grievous bodily harm.
She said that it was not the court’s reasonability to always correct information contained in the police charge sheet which in turn took up the court’s time and disrupted the committal proceedings.
Magistrate Ganaii said that proper information needed to be written down by the informant who was tasked with assisting the police with investigations.
“In the first place, the informant is the person that is supposed to write properly and write proper charges. I don’t understand what it is saying here (in the police information), tooth and brush in the lips, what is that?
“We can laugh about it but this person (Gawi) coming here has the right to be arraigned on the first day of appearance,” Ganaii said.
“We can’t keep adjourning because of things that could have been done correctly in the first place.
“I can’t read a charge that I don’t understand, how do I expect you (Gawi) to understand the charges,” she said.
Ganaii said the investigation team needed to take cases seriously in order to avoid inconveniencing the police prosecutor and the court.
“Court business is serious business, we shouldn’t be doing things cheaply like this. I want to express that the investigators must be very vigilant in the way they arrest, charge and lay information.
“Prosecutors have a lot of cases to do and sometimes it takes up their time to deal with other matters and the court also does not have time to do all this,” Ganaii said.
“We have many cases that we need to attend to.” The matter was adjourned to March 24.