Superintendent transferred from St Julian’s to Paola
Raphael Vassallo Superintendent Sharon Tanti, previously at the helm of the troublesome St Julian’s precinct, has been transferred to Paola and will start work there tomorrow, this newspaper has learnt.
Police sources confirmed her transfer yesterday, but stopped short of supplying any reasons for the move. Nor is it known who will take her place in charge of the St Julian’s police station – considered a “hot seat” among police precincts on account of the many difficulties posed by nearby Paceville, especially on weekends.
Although it is not clear whether the transfer is in any way connected with her own handling of the difficult post, Sharon Tanti herself has been at the forefront of a number of incidents involving questionable police behaviour in recent months.
Among the cases to have besmirched the credibility of the St Julian’s police under Tanti’s tenure – and to have been highlighted by MaltaToday in the past year alone – are the following:
In March, Trevor Ciangura, 25 from Rabat, claimed to have been violently beaten up by the police at the St Julian’s station yard, while the duty sergeant stood in the main doorway, allegedly to stop anybody from entering the station while the beating was taking place. Ciangura also claims that the police ignored an official report about the incident.
In July, the St Julian’s station made headlines again after no fewer than seven police officers were despatched to arrest a 19-year-old girl for stepping onto the St George’s beach with a small dog in her bag. The girl claims to have been subjected to physical and verbal abuse by a number of these officers at the station, and afterwards required treatment for minor injuries and shock. The girl was reportedly asked by Tanti not to report the case to Police HQ, but she found herself arraigned for assaulting the police officers, on the same day (a Sunday) this newspaper reported the entire incident.
In August, Claudio Overend, 19, was charged in court with assaulting two police officers, allegedly in an altercation over a parking space. During the trial, however, an independent witness came forward to contradict the police version of events. According to Birdlife director Tolga Temuge, it was the police who had assaulted Overend, and not the other around. The contradiction between these two testimonies – and with it the possibility of perjury by one or the other party – has to date not been investigated.
The most recent case involved the apparently illegal arrest of Rose Parnis, 45 from Naxxar, at her San Gwann ironmongery last month. Again, it took seven police officers to carry out the arrest: ostensibly for ignoring a court summons, although Parnis herself denies ever having received or signed the warrant.
The incident was captured on the shop’s CCTV system, and the footage strongly suggests undue force having been used to apprehend Parnis and her teenage son.
In a preliminary ruling delivered earlier this month, Magistrate Silvio Meli noted that there was an “illogicality” in the compilation of evidence against Parnis, involving a mismatch of dates on the arrest warrant, which prompted the magistrate to describe the procedure leading to the arrest as “not according to law”.
Sharon Tanti had earlier sued this newspaper for its coverage of this case.
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