Victims angry as cop in Marudi beating still on the job

-probe ongoing, says Brumell

Victims of the Marudi trail beating are angry that the policeman who inflicted blows on them is still in the area working but acting Commissioner of Police Leroy Brumell says that nothing is wrong with this as the investigation is still ongoing.

“He can work. Nothing has happened to him… we are still investigating,” Brumell told Stabroek News yesterday.

He has asked the police commander in the area for a full report on the incident and police investigators were dispatched there to conduct a probe into the incident.

Lorenzo Prince, 21, who was one of the men beaten while trying to shield Verona Prince, his mother, from the blows, yesterday said that the police officer who brutalised them is still part of the crew dismantling illegal dredges in Marudi, in Region Nine.

He said this disclosure was as confusing as it was upsetting to him and his family as they feel that the man should have been called off the operation until the investigations are completed. “He is still in Marudi and is breaking down and seizing engines and moving people… How could the big ones see this and still have him there working? What justice is that? We won’t get no justice?” he questioned. “I still can’t believe it—that he is there breaking up camps and probably beating up people the same way he did my family. Someone has to explain to me how that is possible,” he added.

Prince said he, his father and another man, only identified as “Eagle,” on Wednesday evening gave statements to police at Lethem, who are investigating the assault. “I gave my statement, a long statement, from the starting of the end of the story. They made us give the statements and go over it again and again and question us over and over,” he said.

His mother was up to yesterday still unable to give her statement to police as she and her 10-year-old son, Ronaldo, travelled across the border to Brazil to seek medical treatment for the lad, who is a Brazilian national. She had bemoaned the slothfulness of the police in getting a statement from her, revealing that police at Aishalton and Lethem did not want to take a statement from her as city-based investigators were expected to travel to the area to conduct a probe.

A member of the woman’s family, who was beaten, said that he did not believe that anything would come out of the investigation. “The police is always right. We know that. So, nothing will come out of it. The most you will get is a big one coming out and saying, ‘We are sorry’ and that will be it… I wonder now why we should stress out and give this report or that when nothing will happen anyway,” the man said.

Her son was not very optimistic either. “[I’m] not sure what will happen. What happens in cases like these [is] nothing much so I am not banking on it,” he said.

A video of the assault, broadcast on YouTube with the title ‘Police brutality in Marudi Mountains,’ showed a group of policemen and Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) mines officers standing around as one rank beat men who were trying to protect a woman and her child. The child was lying on top of his mother, who was on the ground as the men used their bodies in an attempt to protect them from the blows. The policeman used a stick to inflict the blows. There were other policemen around with guns.

Stabroek News was told that the GGMC officials and the police were on a road leading into the Marudi Mountain Area to do a follow-up visit on reported illegal mining at the site of the Romanex Guyana Exploration Ltd concession when they encountered persons on the trail. Romanex had notified the agency of the presence of illegal miners and acting on this tip, the officials went into the area.

The Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners’ Association on Wednesday condemned the actions of the police, saying the “mistreatment” of miners and fellow citizens by a few members of the police force “cannot be condoned, regardless of the circumstances.”

In addition to the police probe, the GGMC is also conducting its own investigation of the case.