THE teen who was tortured by police had been accused of some heinous crimes, along with some other suspects belonging to a gang of which it was purported that he was an active member, along with an older brother. Residents in the community related some horrible stories of atrocities committed on vulnerable females returning home late in the evenings.  One female student of the University of Guyana was alleged to have been brutally raped, sodomised and brutalised in other ways and then thrown into a canal.  She was rescued by passersby.
A former Vice-Chairman of Region Three, who had a penchant for helping young men was robbed and brutally murdered in his home, allegedly by the very young men he constantly assisted in various ways. Persons leaving their homes for work or other legitimate pursuits often returned to find their homes vandalised and their possessions stolen, sometimes with human excrement left behind as a souvenir.  The Canals Polder had become a haven for criminal elements, mostly youths.  A former driver of Chronicle was one notable victim that this newspaper can attest to.
Residents knew the perpetrators, but were afraid to provide information for fear of being victimized.  However, when the Vice-Chairman was wantonly murdered the police made arrests.
Whether those arrested were the actual perpetrators or not was never allowed to be proven, because due process was eschewed in favour of torture, which threw the police case into the dungeons and justice for the victims of the marauding criminals onto the backburner as focus was shifted onto the suspects who had been tortured.
Today, one of those suspects has become an overnight celebrity and millionaire because of the actions of a couple of maverick policemen.
The traumatised and brutalised victims of the criminals, most of whom are poor people, have been left much poorer, with scars that could last them a lifetime, with no recourse to justice, all because of the ill-advised and unconstitutional actions of some mavericks in the police force.
If this is not a travesty of justice, what else is?