The horrific torture visited on a 15-year-old some time during the night of Wednesday last has been roundly condemned and rightfully so. Even Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee pontificated that the police had “crossed the line to physical coercion instead of applying psychological pressure to the suspect”. But the question that he ought to answer, and possibly never will is, only now?
Is it really possible that Mr Rohee has only just come to the realization of that which has long been obvious to even the blind? He has ignored in the past, published photographs of Buxtonians Patrick Sumner, Victor Jones and David Leander called `Biscuit,’ who subsequently died under mysterious circumstances. The claims of brutality at the hands of the joint services made by 17-year-old Ryan Gordon of Wakenaam who said he was beaten by officers looking for his uncle and those of Mitchell Thomas of the same island who said he had been placed to lie on an ants’ nest while being questioned by officers were also dismissed. There is no doubt that the lack of sanctions for priors committed emboldened the perpetrators of last Wednesday’s dastardly acts against the teen, Deonarine Rafick, who was badly battered and possibly another suspect whose physical condition at the time of the writing of this editorial was unknown.
But even Mr Rohee’s carefully chosen clichés cannot absolve him. The Home Affairs Minister, the Guyana Police Force, in fact the entire state apparatus have scored an ‘F minus’ on security.
For one thing, there was no longer any line drawn anywhere for the police to have crossed; it was erased a long time ago. For another, a 15-year-old suspect, regardless of the crime he is suspected to have committed, should not be held in police custody at a station lockups with adult detainees. One wonders where the plans are for the long-awaited juvenile detention centre. Or have they fallen, like so many other things, off the back burner?
The burning of the genitals of this youth might be the most extreme case of torture of someone so young at the hands of the police. But it is by no means the only incident, nor is it, as Mr Rohee and Police Commissioner Henry Greene would like us to believe, an aberration. The ‘Skinnys’, ‘Fine Men’ and ‘Nasty Men’ et al did not just come out of broken homes; exposure to violence would have been a factor in their young lives.
The use of violence – of beating or torturing a confession out of a crime suspect, regardless of that suspect’s age – by the police has become systemic. So much so that one has to wonder if new detectives are ever trained in investigative techniques anymore or if their sole qualification is a proclivity for brute force and ignorance.
There has been a plethora of cries of police brutality from suspects over the years, most of which have been ignored by those in authority. The sheer volume of the numbers of persons who have alleged that the police have beaten them and some of whom displayed wounds and scars seemed to have engendered a state of apathy in civil society. The voices of those crying out for a change in the status quo have been few and some have been subjected to ridicule by those of us who believed that it was alright for the police to brutalise someone who might have committed a crime. Thus today’s state of affairs which brings to mind the words of Shakespeare’s Mark Antony: “O judgement thou art fled to brutish beasts. And men have lost their reason.”
But perhaps all reason is not lost. Perhaps last Wednesday’s grotesque act of disfigurement of this hapless 15-year-old will be the catalyst that finally begins to turn things around. Perhaps an example will be made of all those who perpetrated and condoned that act and have done so in the past. Perhaps justice will be done this time around. We can but hope.
