A STAFF member of Guyana National Newspapers Limited (GNNL), printers and publishers of the Chronicle, yesterday alleged that he was harassed by ranks of the Mahaica Police Station.Roodi Balgobin said it happened when he stopped at the Mahaica junction, in the vicinity of the station, on his way home.
He was detained for almost an hour before being released.
Balgobin related that he was going home from Georgetown and when he obeyed the stop sign at the junction.
A policeman with badge number 21911 rushed out of the station and signaled him to pull over.
“He asked for my papers and then he said to come to the station. I asked him what was the charge and he said failure to comply with the road sign.
“He charged me and asked me to sign to the charge. I said I am not signing the charge unless I can give a statement. He went ahead and wrote ‘refused to sign’.
$5,000 bail
“The officer said I was on $5,000 bail but before that, my brother came to inquire what the charge was and how much was the bail. The officer yelled at my brother and told him to ‘get out of the station’.
“My father came and paid the $5,000 but the policeman refused to make out a receipt. He left the station for more than half an hour. When he came back, he made a scene saying ‘what we think this is’. I don’t know what he meant by that, before finally giving me the receipt,” Balgobin
said.
According to the Chronicle employee, the policeman who was on his phone at the station and not on the road, was in no position to credibly assess if he failed or not to comply with the traffic sign and maintained that he was being targeted unreasonably.
“The officer is not a traffic rank, but he is a policeman; and as such when he asked me to pull over, I complied,” Balgobin said.
Recently, the Guyana Police Force (GPF) has been criticised for the unprofessional and hostile approach of its ranks when dealing with the public.