An 81-year-old Guyanese-born American citizen says he is traumatised after police officers allegedly stormed into his home and attempted to drag him to a station without any explanation.
“I am barefoot in my home and the man just grab me and started pulling me, saying ‘Big Man you gat to come to the station now wid we.’ I was shocked and asked him why I was needed there because I didn’t break any law… He said ‘Shut up, you ain’t hear wuh I she? Leh we go’ and started pulling me as I am asking, you know, pleading with him to let me put on my shoes but he continued roughing me up,” Edward Griffith Larry recounted to Stabroek News yesterday.
Several efforts to contact police spokesman Ivelaw Whittaker proved futile. Calls to his department were answered by a female, who stated that he was either busy or unavailable and should be reached on his mobile. When Whittaker’s mobile was called, it went unanswered.
Larry, of New Hope, East Bank Demerara, yesterday told Stabroek News that the ordeal began mid-morning on Tuesday.
He said he was in his house when two policemen barged in and began pulling him, saying he was needed at the police station. They did not indicate which station or the reason why he was needed.
At the time, Larry noted, he was clad in his house clothes and had been speaking with a friend who had visited him because he was not feeling well. “The one—so unpolished, just ‘Big Man this and Big Man that’—I tried, as he held on to me and chucking me up, to explain that I am old and I would come, ‘let me put on my shoes,’” he recalled. “The other one that was with him looked at him and said ‘Let the man put on his shoes. That is all he is asking.’ And he then pushed me and I looked back at him,” he added. Larry later realised that the visit was connected to some lumber he had locked at a property he has at Friendship, which he had leased to a man to be used as a sawmill and lumberyard. He said that after six months of non-payment of rent, he decided to return to Guyana to address the situation. According to Larry, he spoke to his tenant, who told him that he had to clear a container for India on May 31st, after which he would be paid.
However, after unreturned calls and a visit to the site, Larry was told by neighbours that the day the container left the premises a moving truck was there, which cleared his tenant’s property except for piles of lumber.
As a result, he decided that he would hold the lumber to see if his tenant would return for it. Instead, a man from Essequibo contacted him, saying he was the owner of the lumber. He said he told the man that there was no arrangement between them and he needed to make contact with his tenant. The man went away but later called, saying he wanted to talk and returned with the police.
Larry believes that the police who visited him on Tuesday were friends of the man. He explained that when he was ready to accompany them to the police station, he was told that the vehicle that they came with could not be used as it was the private vehicle of the man from Essequibo. “This is how you do it in Guyana. You get your police friends to come and do dirty work for you… there is no professionalism. I am still in shock that Guyana’s police would subject themselves to this type of thing,” he said. “They didn’t even come in a police vehicle. I had to ask my friend to take me because I wasn’t feeling well and to top it off, one of the same police came to sit in my vehicle,” he added as he shook his head.
At the Grove Police Station, Larry said, he was told to sign a form that he had no bruises on his body. He said he signed because he wanted to leave as soon as possible. He was never charged nor told the reason for the visit.
His wife, Debbie Larry, who called from her home in the United States, also expressed disgust at the actions of the police force. She detailed her husband’s medical conditions, saying that she could have heard that he had died from the incident. “The government encourages people overseas to come back to Guyana but how can you come to a place like that when the people who are supposed to protect you abuse you?” the woman said, as she wept.
