Three years ago, Greco, the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption, noted the police had the reputation of being traditionally heavily subjected to the executive branch of power.

Only last week, Calum Steele, the president of the European Confederation of Police – EuroCOP, said "there is an observed concern that there is too close a relationship between the police and the state”.

He also raised questions on whether there was enough separation between the role of the police commissioner and the government when making key appointments.

“Unless there is a clear distinction between the police and the state,” he remarked, “that makes it very difficult for the citizens that work in any nation to have supreme confidence that the individual is being left to deliver a pure policing service.”

Greco drafted its report on the basis of information compiled by an evaluation team that visited the island and had meetings with various stakeholders, operators and players.

A EuroCOP delegation met the police commissioner and the home affairs ministry permanent secretary. However, Steele’s comments were probably also based on feedback his organisation receives internally from within the police force, via the Malta Police Union, which has been a member since 2015.

This gives even more weight to his observations since they would have originated from those suffering the brunt of the ill-effects of the closeness between the police and the state in their day-to-day duties.

The bottom line is that the string-pulling Greco had noticed in April 2019 remains in place even now, in May 2022, notwithstanding all the talk of ‘reform’.

In turn, this proves right those, including the Nationalist Party and legal experts, who had deemed the much-vaunted change in the method of selecting the police commissioner as being too little to really give the police force a free hand in its constitutional duties of investigating crime and prosecuting.

It also means that the Venice Commission’s comments on the police force remain a matter of concern. The commission had stressed the importance of the police enjoying the confidence of the public and being perceived as politically neutral in the service of the state and in the professional, unbiased, enforcement of the law and protection of the citizen.

This concern can only be exacerbated by information that surfaced in court just days ago when a police officer, known within the force for his integrity, admitted the police dragged their feet for years before deciding to bring to Malta a wanted man.

The wanted man happens to be the cousin of Keith Schembri, who was prime minister Joseph Muscat’s chief of staff.

Also, in the past days, the director of studies at the Academy of Disciplined Forces was forced to apologise after he suggested on social media that Nationalist MPs should be pelted with eggs and tomatoes.

Such action may well be deemed by a court of law as being within one’s right of freedom of expression.

However, the comments are certainly unbecoming of a person holding such a position, apart from being a former police inspector, a visiting university lecturer and the brother of the parliamentary secretary for social dialogue.

These are but two in a string of instances when the police ended up in the limelight for the wrong reasons. They also make one wonder whether these were genuine mistakes, the result of string-pulling or too much ‘familiarity’ with Castille.

The trust and autonomy of the police force remain sore issues.