A gold miner was yesterday charged with throwing faeces on police ranks while in custody at Lethem and he told a city magistrate that he did it because the lawmen were beating him.
It is alleged that Peter Grannum, who was arrested for allegedly snatching a woman’s cellular phone, assaulted Assistant Superintendent of Police Rooplall and Constables Browne and Sobers respectively. Additionally Grannum was accused of behaving disorderly at the Lethem Police Station.
Grannum accepted that he behaved disorderly and assaulted Constables Browne and Sobers. However, Grannum denied assaulting Rooplall and stealing the $70,000 cellular phone from Marta Peters during an Amerindian Heritage Month festivity at St Ignatius on September 26.
According to the prosecution’s case, Peters was talking on her phone when Grannum walked up to her and snatched it before making good his escape. The matter was reported to the police, who later held Grannum and instituted a simple larceny charge against him, Grant added. He said that it was while in custody that Grannum used expletives on Rooplall and other ranks. When Rooplall asked him to discontinue, Grant further mentioned, Grannum armed himself with his own faeces and threw it on the officers.
“They were beating me…,” Grannum, however, told the court. “I had to defend myself,” he added.
He said the severe beating he was receiving from the officers at the station forced him to douse them with the human waste.
Grannum also told the Chief Magistrate Priya Sewnarine-Beharry that reports of several matters made by him to the police at Lethem, were being ignored. The first matter, he said, was an episode where he was stabbed to the neck, while in the other he was robbed of 15 pennyweights of gold. In both instances, Grannum claimed his statements and the medical report of the stabbing incident disappeared.
Grannum yesterday made several attempts to change his pleas to guilty, citing his inability to pay bail, but after explaining himself, the Chief Magistrate informed him that she could not accept guilty pleas based on his explanation when answering those charges. Nevertheless, he shouted, “Up there is a cowboy place” and begged her to accept his guilty plea. She later advised him to lodge a complaint with the Police Force’s Office of Professional Responsibi-lity, after he said he did not do so.
Grannum told the court that he was charged with assaulting the mother of his child and sentenced for one year in jail on a simple larceny charge after he was accused of being in possession of a stolen motorcycle. According to him, he was sentenced in 2005, but the prosecution asserted that he had been sentenced in 2012.
Subsequently, the Chief Magistrate ordered Grannum to pay a $10,000 fine with the alternative of two weeks in jail for the disorderly behaviour charge and $20,000 fines or a one month jail term for the assault on the Police Constables. Not pleas were recorded for Grannum in the alleged assault of Rooplall and on the simple larceny charge.
The matters were adjourned until October 1, for the clarification of the previous convictions of the defendant.
