{"id":3267,"date":"2019-12-16T19:44:50","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T19:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/westernmirror.com\/?p=3267"},"modified":"2019-12-16T19:44:52","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T19:44:52","slug":"long-holiday-for-flanker-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/?p=3267","title":{"rendered":"Long holiday for Flanker men"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Barrington Flemming<\/i> – Staff Reporter<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just days after Dr.\nHorace Chang promised to aggressively tackle criminal elements during this, the\nfestive season, some residents are being made to experience the hellish side of\nthat promise. In a matter of days, the community of Flanker has seen a number\nof its male residents swept up, allegedly beaten and detained by the security\nforces, with no hope of being released until 2020, marking what is shaping up\nto be a dark Christmas for themselves and their families.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That situation has sprung attorney-at-law, Charles Sinclair,\ninto action, who has since made a submission to the Emergency Powers Tribunal\non behalf of 11 men from the community who were detained, demanding due\nconsideration for the men to be released.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The men were detained when a joint police\/military team\nraided the community, picked them up, and took them to the St. James Police\nheadquarters in Freeport, Montego Bay, where they have since been held. Things\ndid not go that smoothly, however, for those who were detained, with family\nmembers relating to the Western Mirror the traumatizing circumstances under\nwhich their loved ones were taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latoya Gardener, the common law wife of 33-year-old chef,\nTodd Perkins, one of the men detained, said he was brutalized and locked up\nwith no explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe went to buy box food from a food shop around the corner\nand when dem see him, dem give him some box! Dem haul and pull him and lick\nhim; thump him inna him blind eye, and fling him in a wall. Them even carry him\nover a yard and try fi shoot him \u2013 but the clip drop out,\u201d shared with the Western Mirror<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a different scenario for John Smith, a tiler, who was\nin the process of laying tiles, when he was approached by the police, as\nexplained by his sister, Elaine Thompson. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe was working, doing tiling, when they came up to him. He\nsaid, \u2018A work mi a work\u2019 and the police say, \u2018A work mi a work to\u2019, and dem\nthrow him tools aside and then pull him weh. They did not hurt him, but when we\nask why, they said, \u2018Shut up! It\u2019s State of Emergency\u2019.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marvin Lewis must have prayed that he had stayed at church\nsome time longer, as he was swept up by the lawmen after coming from church\nwith his family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sasekie Lewis, Lewis\u2019 sister, explained what happened with\nher brother. \u201cHim just pick up him mother and daughter \u2013 him family from\nchurch, and the bus was left on the highway. As he stepped out of the bus and\nwalked in, they took him up and say \u2018gwaan inna the truck!\u2019 and carried him\ndown with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In another case, Monica Hendricks, the mother of Delano\nInnis, one of the others detained, said her son was just standing among a group\nof people when the joint police\/military team commandeered him to join the rest\nof the men in the truck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SINCLAIR INTERVENES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amidst the detainments, the families of the men are relying\non the work of the hot-shot attorney to bring their relatives home for the\nholidays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sinclair shared his experience in trying to help the\nfamilies with the Western Mirror. \u201cI have spoken to police officers. Nobody has\npresented anything to me for their detention; there has been no interview, save\nthe regular processing, but no question and answer. What I have done on their\nbehalf is submitted the application to the tribunal for them to determine\nwhether they [the men] should continue in detention or if they should be\nreleased\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sinclair further explained that comments from police\nofficers are suggesting that the men are going to be detained until January\n2020, despite no valid reasons being given for their detention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cIt is something that\nI have raised with the Minister [of National Security] to say that anybody who\nis detained under Regulation 30 of the Emergency Powers Regulation, which\nallows a police officer or a member of the military to detain a person for\nreasonable cause, that they were in an act that threatened public safety, that\na statement be written which outlines what this reasonable cause is based on,\nwhich must be made available to the detainee or to his attorney. I have not\nbeen able to get any such information.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barrington Flemming – Staff Reporter Just days after Dr. Horace Chang promised to aggressively tackle criminal elements during this, the festive season, some residents are being made to experience the hellish side of that promise. In a matter of days, the community of Flanker has seen a number of its male residents swept up, allegedly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1668,582,1677,1678,127,790,1679,390,30,1676],"class_list":["post-3267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-christmas-season","tag-dr-horace-chang","tag-emergency-powers","tag-emergency-powers-tribunal","tag-flanker","tag-former-minister-of-national-security","tag-joint-police-military","tag-state-of-public-emergency","tag-western-jamaica","tag-yuletide-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3268,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3267\/revisions\/3268"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}