The Tribune

By NICO SCAVELLA

Tribune Staff Reporter

nscavella@tribunemedia.net

COMMISSIONER of Police Anthony Ferguson has said the Royal Bahamas Police Force is investigating the actions of officers seen clubbing civilians with nightsticks during a recent Junkanoo parade.

Mr Ferguson, in response to queries from The Tribune yesterday, said the videos in question are being investigated by the RBPF’s Complaints and Corruption Unit.

“I cannot comment on an ongoing investigation any more than that,” Mr Ferguson said.

However, Englerston MP Glenys Hanna Martin called on Mr Ferguson to publicly address the “disturbing” and “concerning” videos so the Bahamian public could “have an understanding of what that was about”.

Both Mr Ferguson’s and Mrs Hanna Martin’s comments were in response to two videos making the rounds on social media involving a group of police officers using long nightsticks on various civilians, all males.

In one of the videos, perhaps the most controversial of the two, several officers clad in dark-coloured fatigues could be seen making several young men lean up against the wall of a pink building with their backs to them.

One of the officers could be seen using two hands to strike one of the young men on his buttocks with full force as if swinging an actual baseball bat. The young man seems unfazed by the hit, and proceeds to walk off calmly. However, the officer walks behind him and swings the nightstick full-force a second time, striking the young man in the buttocks again.

The young man appears to manage to soften the blow somewhat by using his left hand to partially block the blow. Less than three seconds later, however, and while the young man continues to walk away, that officer hits the young man again in like fashion, but this time the blow appeared to be a bit higher on the young man’s posterior.

That officer then returns to where his colleagues and the other men were, where it was apparently another young man’s turn to receive a ‘lashing’ at his hands.

But what stood out about that interaction was that the ‘beating’ officer shoved one of his colleagues who was standing nearest the second young man completely out of the way and—without provocation as the young man was posted up against the wall - proceeded to beat him on his buttocks.

The officer strikes the second young man, donned in a white t-shirt, blue jeans and a black beanie hat, on his buttocks a first time. But just before the officers lands another powerful hit, the young man darts off and continues running after receiving the second hit.

That officer could then be seeing moving onto a third young man in a green and white shirt before the video cuts out.

One Facebook user, Ulric Gibson, said of the video: “If you have a problem with the police beating your good son keep him home. If you are a responsible parent you will know where your underage son or daughter is and who is supposed to be out with them at an event”.

In response to that comment, Barry Eric McKinney said: “You know police do this to adults as well right? Also, why is it okay for police to go about beating anyone anyway? Much less, minors? It’s important that we remember their job doesn’t involve sentencing/prosecution”.

In the second of the two videos, any number of police officers could be seen embroiled in a melee on what looks like the southern side of the Bank of the Bahamas facing Shirley Street with any number of men.

At the start of the video, one officer is seen repeatedly striking a man in a red shirt with his nightstick as he lied on the ground from behind a barricade, before other officers standing on the other side of the barricade where the man was pulled him away. But before those officers did so, another officer managed to strike the man on the ground with his nightstick.

The man in the red shirt manages to get to his feet, and is then forcibly led away by officers, who bump him in his back and push him. One officer gets ahold of the man’s hand, and so he yanks his hand free. Then, the group stops for about five seconds, before one of the officers, a larger one, shoves the man so hard in his chest he is almost sent clean over the metal barricade, which he ends up slamming into audibly.

The officer then pushes the man in the red shirt a second time, before other officers converge in on the situation.

The video then cuts out to a second angle of the incident from the opposite direction, showing another officer in navy blue running to the skirmish. That angle captures a more chaotic scene however, as a man in an orange shirt could be seen embroiled in the action.

That man in the orange could be seen being yanked, held and even hit in the head by some of the officers, while in the background, nightsticks could be seen in the air, held by officers apparently preparing to strike someone or something.

As the confusion continues to unfold, a third man in a white shirt and what appears to be grey pants could be seen on the ground on his back at the feet of the various officers and other men. He manages to get it up, but only to be grabbed by one of the officers who, along with another one, hits and shoves him back to the ground.

While that was going on, a woman could be heard saying: “Why they beat this man so bad? No!” When the man is hit and shove to the ground, the woman then exclaims: “That’s wrong! Why they doing that?!”

Meanwhile, another man in a red shirt and black beanie had could be seen being grabbed by the back of the neck by an officer and shoved out of the way of the skirmish.

Meanwhile, the man in the orange shirt was since removed from the other side of the barricade where the confusion was and paraded in the street by several officers. As the man was being led off by the officers, he could be seen placing his hand on his head. When he removes his hand and he comes closer to the person recording, blood could be seen on his head.

An unknown man could be said saying in an audibly irritated voice: ““You know they joking, though! They (expletive) joking man!” Seconds later, when the woman notices the blood pouring from the head of the man in the orange shirt, she exclaims: “Oh my god look what they do!”

After the videos went viral, Mrs Hanna Martin posted to her official Facebook page: “Videos in circulation displaying disturbing encounters between the police and members of the public at Junkanoo. (Commissioner of Police) must speak”.

When contacted on the issue, Mrs Hanna Martin said: “The images are very disturbing. We would need the commissioner of police to give an explanation as to what that is about.

“…I’ve seen a lot of people rationalizing it, but the commissioner needs to give an explanation. Because, certainly in the course of policing, (based on) what I understand to be policing, the images are disturbing.

“Of course I don’t know the facts, I only know what I saw on that video. But what I saw is disturbing to me. And so the commissioner needs to speak to it so we have an understanding of what that was about.”

She added: “We all know we have problems with crime and whatever the issues are. But we still have norms, accepted norms and practices, we have laws, we have rules. I don’t want to see us rationalizing going outside of that because we feel overtaking by whatever the issue is.

“And so the situation now seems to be rationalizing things that on the face of it, would normally cause concern. So we have to be careful.”