-after beating of suspected thief
The recent arrests in Wismar, Linden in connection with the assault of a suspected thief have incensed residents, who have accused the police of ignoring their reports.
Residents belonging to One Mile and Block 22, Wismar explained that they have been waking up in the morning to find several of their goats missing; the heads and legs of others were sometimes left in their pens.
With the thefts continuing, they eventually decided to set a trap for the thief. “We decided that we got to ketch this person who doing this thing,” Faye McAlmont related. “So… everybody in the neighbourhood who had goats and were getting the problem decided to hide and lay [in] wait for the thief.” Later, a man known to residents was seen climbing into the goat pen of one resident. “Deh wait ’til he reach in deh pen and then raise a alarm and with that everybody circle he in deh pen and give he a good thrashing,” McAlmont added.
The woman said that when the man was caught, they summoned the police at the Wisroc Outpost but got no response.
A subsequent call was made to the Wismar Police Station but they were told that there were no available ranks. “Is ’til when I tell them that I going to the President about their behaviour that the female police tell me wait and leh she call de patrol. In no time de patrol arrive,” McAlmont explained.
By the time the suspect was handed over to police, he had sustained several chop wounds to his head and his back and there were other cuts and bruises to other parts of his body. His left leg was also badly injured. He was whisked away to the Linden Hospital Complex by police and he remained a patient for approximately one week.
According to residents, they visited the Wismar Police Station after the incident to give their statements but they were turned away. Later, when resident Nichola McAlmont visited the Mackenzie Police Station, she was arrested and subsequently placed on $20,000 station bail.
The suspected thief had been found in a goat pen in her yard. “Nichola is a sick woman. Only the Thursday before this happen she came out of the hospital after going through a major surgery. She did not lay a finger on that man that night,” Faye McAlmont said.
Since then, residents of One Mile and Block 22 say they have been harassed by investigating ranks, who did not make attempts to follow up on their initial reports. Further, they said key information and materials to prove the suspected thief’s guilt were left behind, including a red trading bag, a knife and two garbage bags. “We took these things to the police and they refused to take it. They were supposed to pick up them things the very night but they didn’t do what they were suppose to do,” added another resident.
The residents, who are mainly women, said that they were summoned to the Mackenzie Police Station to give further statements. Another of them, Rhonda Arthur, was detained. At the time of her detention, Arthur had her young daughter with her. She was forced to turn her over to her neighbours at the station. “I really can’t understand what is really going on. The police doing their work back-to-front. This man killing out we stocks and thieving it and we made several reports to the station and they never investigated. Now, we do what we had to do, they harassing us. This is not fair,” a resident said.
Contacted, the Officer in Charge of the Mackenzie Police Station said that he did not have the details of the matter at hand.
However, he immediately summoned the women to his office to address the matter. “I will be looking into this. The ranks were to do their investigations and submit it to the DPP so I am going to look into this issue…,” he said.
