Staff Reporter
THE Olive Press did a story a few months ago suggesting that the McGrail inquiry would ‘have a chilling effect on law enforcement’ in Gibraltar.
These were some of the sentiments expressed by RGP officers at the time when giving their testimony to the inquiry.
It is of course debatable whether that will turn out to be so, but at least now we know on whom it might have a chilling effect.
There has, it seems, been all-round agreement – vanishingly rare on the Rock – that an outsider was necessary.
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That to police this community of roughly 30,000 Gibraltarians, 10,000 so-called expats, plus 15,000 cross-border workers requires someone who is not one of any-one.
And surely it does, at this juncture we’re at.
Commander Owain Ceri Richards of the Metropolitan Police Service in London has been chosen as the man to do it, starting on July 1.
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While we don’t know whether Richards will be able to pull the RGP together after a period of turmoil, we do know that’s what he was hired to do and we know he will try his bloody best.
We know that. But there’s something we don’t know about the man yet.
As, lest we not forget, one of the unavoidable conclusions of the McGrail hearings last year, more or less made explicitly clear by the Chief Minister himself, is that there are some individuals the law should treat differently.
Gibraltar is home to certain people whose importance to the economic vitality of the territory commands a different reckoning, it is claimed.
Will Richards play by these rules?
If a future investigation leads him to the door of one the Rock’s legal titans, will he knock on it with a search warrant? This is what we don’t know.
Ultimately it’s too early to know the answer to these questions.
But we must hope the report by Sir Peter Openshaw, pushed back once again as it has been, will eventually provide them.
