Police, Crime Suspects and the Truth

A couple of days ago when my editor got a call from the police public relations officer in Lokoja, it wasn’t certain what it was for as such calls don’t come too often. When they do, it’s either the police want to parade some suspects or require media coverage for some police event or worse still complain about some story.

For this particular call, some suspects have been apprehended and the police want to tell the world, and probably get some kudos for doing a good job of ridding society of some questionable characters – we have quite a handful of them hanging around street corners or at some hiding places.

These police rituals aren’t the point for me. It’s that in each of those times, a large percentage of these suspects have always screamed out their innocence that most people have actually wondered who the liar is.

Imagine, a young man weeping profusely and trying so hard to convince anyone who cares to listen of his innocence of the crime for which the police arrested him or inflicted some injury on him.

The question or worry is: why do suspects almost all the time weep for their innocence? It simply doesn’t click.

I asked one of them with a bullet wound on his thigh why he is in handcuffs if he is truly innocent of the crime the police accuse him of.

He wailed the more, “master, I’m innocent; the police are just trying to frame me up. Please help me.”

I looked at him straight in the eyes as if I could find any answers, wondering how come the bullet wound on his thigh. I couldn’t figure out who was lying – the police or the suspect.

Another of the suspects told a long-winding tale of how the police swooped on a drinking place where he was having a good time with his friends and herded all of them into the police van. In short, he is in the police net accused of a crime he knows nothing about.

I asked a legal practitioner, why crime suspects openly claim innocence for crimes, the police say they arrested them for.

The lawyer went into a long postulation of why the police doesn’t have any right to publicly parade suspects because the law says an accused is innocent until proven guilty by the law, which also explains why the media isn’t allowed to openly show or publish the faces of suspects as they may end up innocent and sue for defamation.

But that still doesn’t explain why crime suspects openly claim innocence for crimes for which the police publicly parades them.

Indeed, not a few Nigerians will agree with the legal practitioner. You wouldn’t blame them either, as many of them have been victims of armed robbery attacks or experienced bloodier episodes where loved ones have either been raped or killed by daredevil robbers.

Again, many say the police could be really terrible as there have been instances where the police have arbitrarily arrested innocent citizens on trumped-up charges or gotten involved in cases of extra-judicial killings, torture or other horrendous reasons many say border on scoring cheap popularity or attracting unwarranted praise from their bosses.

I asked the police public relations officer and an assistant superintendent of police, Inalegwu Onum why such fierce denials come from suspects almost all the time.

His response was very instructive.

“It is normal for human beings to whip up sentiments to win some sympathy particularly if they know their actions may attract some punishment, inflict some pain or take away their freedom. And that explains why many of these criminals try to destroy evidence or claim ignorance of the law.”

Inalegwu for emphasis added, “that is human nature and it doesn’t matter if they’re caught at the scene of the crime committing the sin, they will still deny”.

He however noted that “some of them may actually be innocent, but that’s left to the law to determine”.

One of my colleagues actually gave an explanation that sounded somewhat plausible. He says the legalese in which charges are couched is usually scary.

He paints a scenario – a man engages his neighbour in a fight, and for whatever reason one dies, the charge will have words like: manslaughter, assault, intent on bodily harm and such jargons. According to my colleague when an unlettered or half educated offender hears these words, the first reaction is to deny because he doesn’t understand what they’re saying.

After all it was just a fight.

Whatever it is that propels crime suspects to deny accusations so fiercely, only they know. It could be for those reasons already highlighted or some other hidden reasons tucked away in the hearts of the suspects themselves.

Whatever it is, we will keep wondering.