The new Home Affairs has promised a “root and branch review” of how complaints against the police are handled, and has invited the input of deputies.
The message came as the States debated the annual report from the Police Complaints Commission.
Deputy Marc Leadbeater said Home would address the makeup of the Commission – which has been criticised for being toothless – and how its members are selected.
“Nothing is off the table, nothing whatsoever,” he said, promising that best practice would be evaluated to see if more independence is required.
Deputy Leadbeater said a new process for reviewing complaints, which was implemented last August, was allowing body cam footage to be reviewed earlier to get a “snapshot”.
He noted that new leadership at the police, and its beefed up public standards and counter-corruption department, is staffed with people “at the top of their game” and would improve the situation.
The number of complaints against the police had also tailed off since the new Head of Law Enforcement Damien Kitchen took office, it was added.
Deputy Rob Curgenven, a critic of the complaints system, won backing from politicians to debate the report which is normally noted without speeches.
He said while changes have been made there is still a public perception it isn’t fit for purpose and needs more transparency to rebuild public trust.
“It is standard practice in many jurisdictions for police to investigate complaints made against themselves. This process includes, contrary to social media, criminal complaints against officers. Understandably, this creates public unease,” Deputy Curgenven said.
“This is why most developed countries have established bodies tasked with looking over the police’s shoulder. In Guernsey, this role falls squarely on the shoulders of the Police Complaints Commission.
“But the Commission does not oversee every police complaint for it doesn’t have the legal authority to do so. In 2024, for example, there were 93 complaints made against Guernsey Police. Yet the Commission, as shown on page 8 of the report, was only permitted to oversee 39 of these. Of those 39, it supervised 12 investigations.”
He said the pace of reform has been “unacceptably slow” and claimed that since its inception the Commission has never upheld an appeal against a decision of the police.
But this was rejected by Deputy Leadbeater who said it has considered 31 appeals in its time, but none of those resulted in disciplinary proceedings being brought forward.
Deputy Jayne Ozanne noted there was wider perceived inequality with the justice system, saying poorer households are more dissatisfied with access to justice than richer households.
“The perception is that the rich get justice while the poor get the law,” she said.