Does the State of Emergency Override the 48-Hour Detention Rule?

The State of Emergency gives police sweeping powers, but those powers come with a deadline. Attorney Richard “Dickie” Bradley says officers cannot hold detainees indefinitely without taking them before a court, even as the crackdown intensifies. So, when does lawful detention become a violation of someone’s constitutional rights? Bradley breaks down how long police can legally keep someone behind bars and what must happen when the constitutional clock runs out.

 

Richard “Dickie” Bradley, Attorney-at-law

“So let me say what the law is, it’s not my opinion. Section 5 subsection 3 of our Constitution says, any person who is arrested or detained, A and B, for the purpose of being in front of a court or B, upon reasonable suspicion of having committed or being about to commit a criminal offense, and who is not released. Anybody who get detained or arrested, mostly a detention with a taco, just pick up people and lock them up. Because to arrest you, you have to go to a regime which the same law tells you,you must tell the person immediately what they write. You must allow to communicate with an attorney of his choice. No, no, I’m in court on police, the magistrate that time. I make him make two calls, I never get through, so I allow him to come. No, if you have no two calls, no telephone call, just don’t move it. You must make the person communicate. So, anybody who’s arrested or detained, and who is not released, shall be brought before a court without undue delay. Those are loaded words. Let me finish the sentence. So it says, and who is not released shall be brought before a court without undue delay, and in any case,  not later than 48 hours. That’s the way the 48 hours come from.  and here we are. Two lean lines in the constitution   are being violated all across the country with impunity.  It can’t be in our country that the media only wants to report the six o’clock news. That has taken us where we are. Ignorance in the society. You don’t know your basic right. You don’t know that no police can put you in a stinking police cell for 48 hours or 20 hours or six hours. I don’t want to cause no bad words. This is the law of the land. This is the supreme law of the land. The judges of the courts are the guardians of our rights. That is also the law.”

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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