Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Sep 21, 2014 News
– son locked up for four days
United States of America based Guyanese, Anita Hazel, is so upset with a few rogue members of the Guyana Police Force that she has vowed to ensure that they pay for what they did to her 86 Hill Street, Lodge house two Fridays ago.
Hazel, who was in New York when a party of policemen raided her property under the pretext of looking for armed robbery suspects, hurried back home last week only to find several ransacked rooms and a few expensive items missing.
And if that was not enough she had to come to grips with the police arresting her son, Noel Shepherd, and locking him up for four days before releasing him without charge.
Yesterday, when this newspaper visited the home which is located on the upper flat of a two-storey building, it appeared as if a tornado had passed though; barrels were upturned and its contents scattered on the floor, the toilet bowl was ripped out, pillows were ripped open, while there was a broken expensive china table among several other items that were emptied from a cupboard.
No room was spared by the ranks who claimed to be looking for stolen items and drugs, even as Hazel’s son watched on helplessly.
Speaking with this newspaper at her Lodge home yesterday, Mrs. Hazel, who had returned to the USA on August 14 after spending her holiday here, said that she received a telephone call from her daughter who occupies the lower flat of the house, informing that the police had raided her house.
She said she immediately made arrangements to travel back to Guyana.
Over the years she has been sending down several household items in preparation for her return to Guyana after retiring from her job in Brooklyn.
“I heard that they break open the place, they carry away my son, lock him up and they break up the whole place. Eight hundred and change (US$800+) it cost me to come but I had to come. We had two computers, they carry it away, saying that my son had to get receipt for them…because is stolen item,” Mrs. Hazel stated.
“This is what I come and meet…I don’t have nowhere to sleep now because of the condition of the place; I’m lying down on the verandah on a cot,” she added.
Her son recalled that on September 12, last, around 13:30 hours, he was sleeping at home when he heard a commotion downstairs at his sister’s apartment. Upon peeping out, he saw several police ranks searching his sister’s place.
A few minutes later he heard knocking at the front and back doors on the second floor.
When he eventually opened up to avoid the cops breaking it down, he was confronted by several armed ranks.
“They just tell me ‘get up against the wall’ with their gun in my face and they were going on and on…and like about twelve police come inside the house,” Shepherd stated.
He said that one of the ranks became excited after seeing several newly shipped items and exclaimed to his colleagues that they would have a long search.
Eventually they broke the door to his mother’s room where they found several high-priced items that Hazel had posted down to Guyana.
“They began tumbling up everything, asking me, ‘Who thing is this? You have receipt for this, receipt for that?’ That is how they were going on. They had me handcuffed…they take away all of my jewellery, my laptop, my tape recorder,” Shepherd said.
He was taken to the Kitty Police Station where he remained for four days, going through an identification parade in the process.
Shepherd said that the police told him that somebody whose car was parked across the street from his home was robbed and the perpetrators were inside his house.
“And the one thing led to another. After they put me on ID parade, they had me in custody for how much days. They could have handled it better. After they released me it took four days for me to get back my stuff, but no apology,” Shepherd claimed.
He added that one of the officers, who was part of the investigating team, fell in love with a tape recorder that they had seized from the house and even offered to buy it from Shepherd, who duly refused to sell.
“He tell me ‘Boy, you stupid, you don’t want money…All dem thing you got in you house, you sure you gat receipt for them?”
His mother also lamented the unprofessional conduct of the raiding party and plans seeking an audience with senior officials of the Guyana Police Force.
She said that while she would not blame the entire Guyana Police Force for her current situation which is “very disappointing and disgusting”, she wants the organization to “weed out” the elements within who are giving it a bad name.
“I work hard and this house wasn’t built by blood money…so touch not the Lord’s anointed and do his prophet no harm. I’m going to the last extreme and everybody that came here and did this, they will feel me….they won’t see me,” Hazel declared.
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