A mother cries for justice
after son beaten by police
PHILIPSBURG--A mother’s cry rang out Tuesday for what she described as “out of control police officers” to be reined in.
Ucilla Jnofinn said the “out-of-control” officers had severely beaten her seventeen-year-old son, disabling his left arm Monday night.
Her complaint was backed up by a doctor’s report and X-ray examinations showing that the tissues beneath the skin of her son’s injured arm had been shattered and would take time to heal. There is also blood settlement beneath the skin.
Her son V.J. (17) of St. Maarten reportedly visited the Philipsburg police station Monday night with two others to produce documents to show that J.W., who had been detained in Fort Willem as a suspected illegal resident, was in fact residing legally on the island. However, V.J. was then detained in connection with a pellet gun found in the car in which he and his two friends had been travelling.
She said she had secured the services of a lawyer and would not rest until justice was served and her son is paid for every day he has to stay home from work.
Police spokesman Inspector Johan “Janchi” Leonard told The Daily Herald he could neither confirm nor deny the incident.
V.J. explained that he had learnt that his friend J.W. had been detained by police and Voluntary Corps VKS officers of the Operation Quick Response team while he was in Fort Willem with a scooter.
When he learnt of the arrest, he and J.W.’s brother D.W. had gone to the police station with one other person to prove that J.W. was a legal resident. While at the station, one of his friends remarked that police should spend their time arresting people who were committing crimes and not detaining a hard working man, referring to J.W.
V.J. said, “I told my friends it makes no sense to complain about that and said let’s go. When we went outside the station we saw a group of VKS and police officers coming towards us and my friends ran, but I decided not to run because I knew I did not do anything wrong.”
He said the officers had held him, slapped him about for a few minutes and told him to go home after asking him a few questions. When he started walking he was called back by one of the officers and when he returned he was told he was under arrest because a pellet gun had been discovered in the car in which he had travelled to the police station as a passenger.
He said he was then taken into a “cold room” in the police station where he was surrounded by several police officers while he was being interrogated. He said, “They asked me whose gun it was and where I got it and whenever they asked me and I said I don’t know they hit me on my hand with the baton.”
He said they had hit him so hard that at one stage he had nearly passed out. With his arm throbbing from the multiple blows he was thrown into the police holding cell and kept there until 5:00pm on Tuesday when he was released.
He said he had also witnessed the two other persons who had gone with him to the police station being detained and beaten. “The police told me that I was lucky, but they were not as lucky and they took the long batons and started beating the fellas and some of the officers put on their gloves and started punching the guys.”
He said he and the others had spoken to his friend during the night and told him, “Hey, we did not know you had that pellet gun, so you got to come clean and confess.”
He said his friend had confessed and they had been released, after speaking to Chief Inspector Tony Rogers of Internal Affairs. Inspector Rogers also reportedly gave him a signed requisition for the x-ray examination.
V.J.’s mother said it was difficult as a parent to see people ill-treat her child. She said there were too many complaints about police brutality and the officers doing this sort of thing should be put away and made to undergo psychiatric treatment. She said, “They are demon-possessed, because no one in their right mind would do something like that.”
She said she would be relentless in her pursuit of justice, because someone had to pay for her son’s pain.
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