–Yoruba band leader
Leader of the Yoruba Singers band, Eze Rockcliffe who spent three hours in the much-maligned Brickdam Police Station lock-ups, has described the facility as “treacherous” and a “health hazard.”
Like others who have spent time in the lock-ups, Rockcliffe told Stabroek News that it was an experience he did not want to go through again and called on the relevant authorities to intervene and make the facility more fit for human dwelling. It is has been years that complaints have been piling up over the condition of not just the Brickdam facility, but many others throughout the country.
Rockcliffe spent the three hours at Brickdam last Friday night after being arrested because of a noise nuisance report made against his band; he said that his band was being targeted and that the police treated him unfairly. He has since been charged with noise nuisance and placed on $5,000 bail. He said he was thrown in the lock-ups after an inspector overheard him telling his wife to contact Stabroek News.
The singer had said the police approached him while he was in the middle of a performance at the Clerical and Commercial Workers Union (CCWU) building on Quamina Street and demanded that he turn off his music. He was informed that the group was disturbing a wake nearby. Rockcliffe declined to stop playing on the grounds that the Friday night gig was important to the band’s survival, but he offered to mute the celebrations. He also suggested that the outside speakers could be turned off in consideration of the mourners nearby. The lawmen did not agree with his suggestion and promptly carted him off to Brickdam in handcuffs.
‘Any kind of disease’
The band leader, reliving the three hours spent in the lock-ups, said it exposed inmates to “any kind of disease” while adding there was no functioning sanitary facility at the location.
Stabroek News had been previously told by another former inmate that none of the two toilets in the lock-ups was working, but there were two cells that detainees use, relieving themselves on the floor. Some of the detainees also relieve themselves in empty food boxes.
Rockcliffe confirmed this to Stabroek News stating that most of the 30 inmates that were in the lock-ups at the time of his incarceration were at the front of the facility as the back was used to relieve themselves. He said the stench was unbearable.
“I have been hearing complaints about the facility for sometime now but I never imagined it to be that bad,” the man said.
A former inmate had told Stabroek News that a bucket, which was used to “wash down” the lock-ups in the morning, was also used to take tea for the inmates which was then dipped out with an enamel cup and poured into small plastic bottles from which they drank. If you are not in possession of a bottle then no tea would be given to you.
Rockcliffe told Stabroek News that the bucket was not only used to take tea for the inmates but he was told that food was also taken for the men in the same container. “They said that sometimes they would get rice and bones in the bucket. And the bucket was one time red but now it is in a pink colour,” he said. He said some of the men told him that they were in lock-ups for four to five days without any charges being instituted.
The man, who has been in the band business for over 30 years, said he would have never believed he would have ended up at the facility and cautioned young people to keep on the right side of the law. However, he acknowledged that the persons who end up in the lock-ups were only accused and many times they are not charged with any offence.
Rockcliffe noted that the Ministry of Health has been issuing numerous advisories to flood-affected areas warning them about the health hazards and how to protect themselves against disease. “But it seem as soon as you enter the lock-up you cease to be a human being because they are sending you into a facility where you are exposed to all kinds of disease,” he said. He said he never knew he was claustrophobic until he entered the lock-ups and experienced serious breathing problems.
According to Rockcliffe, the inmates told him that they are allowed to bathe with water from a hose that is passed into the lock-up through a hole they use to urinate.
Stench
“The first thing that hits you is the stench. It is a smell that no human being should have to experience. The smell is so unbearable that it causes your eyes to water and your skin to burn,” were the words of a professional with whom Stabroek News had spoken after he spent time in the lock-ups.
The professional, who had preferred to remain anonymous, had been involved in a minor accident, which resulted in him being arrested and hauled down to the Brickdam Police Station.
After one night in the confines of a place some call “a hellhole”, he had said that it was an experience he would never forget and one that he would not want to be repeated in this lifetime.
The man had said it was not just the stench or the fact that there were some 83 persons in the lock-ups that particular night but he was also stunned by the “whole new world” behind those walls; from the beating and assault of a man who reportedly molested a 12-year-old girl to the forced “fanning” of some by others and the bartering of phone calls for food.
At the time he was in the lock-ups the man had said, some men were reportedly paid by the relatives of the child to beat the man and before they commenced their acts of assault, they told the man to “drop his pants.”
Another former inmate, a push-cart operator, had told Stabroek News, “All two a dem toilets full to the brim and overflowing, nobody can’t use that. And then you have some big blue flies does be flying whole day and going zoom all the time; it is horrible and I keep thinking about it all the time.”
Shut down
In January 2002, Chairman of the Bar Council of England and Wales, Lord Daniel Brennan QC had recommended that the facility be shut down. Lord Brennan made the comment after a visit to Guyana aimed at improving the local judicial system. During his visit Lord Brennan met members of the judiciary, the police force and the prison service. He had also toured the Camp Street Prison calling it a “reasonable” facility but had said that the Brickdam lock-ups should be “locked up and closed.”
In 1999, then Minister of Home Affairs Ronald Gajraj had closed the facility for renovations. When Stabroek News recently attempted to speak to Commander of ‘A’ Division Leroy Brummel on the state of the facility he had declined, stating that the police and the public would have different “ideas on what a lock-up should be like.” Several attempts to speak to Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee on the issue had also proved futile. Rohee said he was not “prepared to speak on the state of police lock-ups.”
And the minister said that he was not prepared to facilitate visits to the Alberttown and Brickdam lockups by interested Parliamen-tarians.
“No, I am not prepared at this point in time to allow visits to the lock-ups at either station or any station,” he had declared in response to a question posed by PNCR-1G MP, Debra Backer at Parliament. He had asserted that it was not for security concerns but for other reasons, which he was not prepared to disclose.
