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Police terrorise Land of Canaan family

Aug 13, 2009 News

A Land of Canaan, East Bank Demerara, family is still reeling from the frightening ordeal of policemen breaking down their door in the wee hours of the morning in search of a wanted man.
From all appearances the police got their information mixed up and targeted the home of Abigail Austin and her family.
In the end, after waking the family, damaging their door and pointing guns in their faces, the policemen who were in plainclothes left with just a simple apology.
But the family was not satisfied and they have reported the matter to Divisional Commander, Leroy Brummell who has since ordered an investigation.
Abigail Austin said that she and her husband, along with three of her four children, were at home when they were aroused by a loud banging on the front door of their Lot 49, Land of Canaan (Higgins Ville) residence. It was around 2:15 hours yesterday.
The woman said that her husband, Clayburn Austin, got up and enquired whom it was.
“They say, ‘Police! Open de (edited) door.’ My husband said that he was not opening the door because he did not know if it was really police or bandits. These men didn’t show no ID and they didn’t have on police clothes,” Austin told Kaieteur News.
She said that as the banging on the door continued, her husband took precaution by bracing a chair behind with the aim of preventing anyone from breaking in.
However the ‘intruders’ went to the back door where they again tried desperately to break in.
By this time, Austin, her husband and their terrorized children had secured themselves in a bedroom and began to wait for the inevitable.
Eventually the door was ripped out and four men with guns entered.
“One of them climbed up on my daughter’s bed with his boots on and pointed his gun through the crease at us and ordered us to open up,” Austin recalled.
When the family emerged the men held them at gunpoint. Austin said that she began crying hysterically, since she feared for the lives of her family and herself.
“I see this kind of thing in the movies and I read about other people, but I never experienced something like this,” she told this newspaper.
She said that one of the men asked her husband his name and he told them it was Clayburn Austin.
The man then enquired from the family if they were all the persons who occupied the house and they answered in the affirmative.
“They asked us if we know Tony and we told them that he was a guy who lives in the area. Then they told us that people pointed out our house as the house in which Tony lives,” the still traumatized woman stated.
“Then they said, ‘Sorry, we are police.’ And they left,” the woman added.
Austin said that her husband reported the incident to the Divisional Commander who oversees the Timehri Police Station from where it is believed the ranks operated.
However, the woman said that what is scary is the fact that police at Timehri indicated that they had no knowledge of any patrol leaving from that facility.
“If they had come in a better manner it would have been different.
I thought they were bandits and when they pointed their guns at us, I really thought that they were going to kill us,” Austin said.
The family was assured that an investigation into the mater has been launched.

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