Police beat taxi driver at Stabroek Market

Nov 18, 2010 News

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– told the driver he “parked wrong”

Several minibus and hire car drivers, speedboat operators, vendors and ‘touts’ were visibly upset on Tuesday, last, when two “black clothes policemen” on motor-bikes who were patrolling around the Stabroek Market area, began assaulting a taxi-driver ‘for no good reason’.
According to sources, the driver who was identified as Colin Williams also known as “Robin”, about 40, was parked not too far from the back gate of the market, closer to the stelling, when the two “black clothes policemen” approached him and told him “You park wrong here”.
Robin was reportedly puzzled and asked the officers, “I park wrong?” and then he pulled out his cellular phone from his pocket to make a telephone call.

One vendor told this newspaper that she heard one of the officers tell Robin, “You can’t deh pun deh phone when yuh under arrest”.
One rank, who was described as “very fair skinned, then allegedly cuffed Robin in the face.
Two speedboat operators explained that they had ventured inside the market to purchase food and when they came out to return to the stelling, they witnessed the ordeal.
The speedboat operators said that they saw Robin on the cellular phone and one rank whom they described as “very, very black with nuff gold teeth in his mouth” snatched Robin’s cell phone and somehow it fell to the ground.
Robin then asked the officer, “Boy, like you is meh father” and he bent to pick up his phone. It was then he received the cuff to his face and the Negro officer continued to kick him in his face and “stomp him up” after he fell to the ground.
Some vendors explained to the Kaieteur News reporter that they shouted to the officers that Robin is a ‘heart case’ and the response they received was “We don’t business if he sickly”. The policemen continued to scuffle with Robin, who landed at the side of a Rav4 bearing the license plate PKK 1655, resulting in one of the headlights being broken.
The Rav4 also sustained dents and scratches.
The owner of the vehicle, Kavita Seenarine, stated that she was with her parents inside of the market, where they operate a snackette, when they heard her vehicle alarm go off. When she went outside she saw the policemen and Robin “on top the front of the Rav4” scuffling.
Robin then fell on a Jialing motor-scooter CE 5982, damaging it as well. Kavita explained that it would cost her over $50,000 to repair her vehicle.
Other on-lookers said that the officers continued to “beat and stomp Robin”, who appeared to be lapsing into an unconscious state on the road, and then “threw” Robin into the back of a police vehicle (which persons claimed belonged to Impact Base) and drove away.
Another taxi-driver said that Robin usually parks at the same spot and sometimes other drivers would use the spot when he was not there.
A bus driver said that “they throw him at the back of the vehicle like if he was a dead body, like them people who get shoot up and dead”.
A number of persons told this newspaper that the officers were patrolling on motor-cycles “CE 2838” and “CE 2840”.
When Kaieteur News arrived at the Brickdam Police Station to speak to the officers in question, the reporter overheard the rank who was described as “very, very black with nuff gold teeth in his mouth” in the Enquiries Department, telling another officer named “Sullivan”, that “ It hard fuh deh pun the road these days man.”
He showed her his left wrist which had a cut and told the officer that he was “going to the medical department at the Station” because he sustained injuries from a ‘scuffle’ with a taxi driver, who was “presently at the hospital”.
The officer told Sullivan that the driver “had a knife on him”.
Robin visited this newspaper Tuesday evening, after being discharged from the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPHC), and verified that all of the information supplied by sources, was accurate and precise. He explained that when the officers told him he had parked “wrong”, he told them that he was going to “call Commander Brown from Linden”.
One officer, whom he identified, told him that “you can call who the sc**t you want” and that is when his phone was snatched away and they began to “beat him”. Robin stated that the officers took away his dual-sim cellular phone and he had in his possession $20,000 and US$100, which he is yet to receive.
He said that he does not know what happened to his money or his cap, since the officers took him to the hospital in an unconscious condition.
When he was told that the officers said he had a knife in his possession, he stated that he did not have any form of weapon on him, and that all the witnesses can testify that the only thing he had in his hand was his cellular phone.
Robin told Kaieteur News that his head was badly swollen while his body pains from the “beatings” he received.
He is to return to the GPHC today to receive his medical form from the relevant authorities.

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