?A 44-year-old woman wants the police force to take disciplinary action against an officer who she said disrespected her on Thursday when she made a report of a beating she received as well as an attempted rape.
?The woman, who requested anonymity, told the WEEKEND NATION that instead of assisting her, the male officer was more concerned with asking if she was a lesbian and even refused to take her home unless she answered the question.
Explaining the events which unfolded at about 12:30 a.m., the woman said she was at a friend’s house watching football on television when that friend physically attacked her and tried to rape her.
“When the football was finished it was late so he told me he would walk me up the road to my home . . . I like I drop off to sleep and when I catch myself I get up and told him that I was leaving. As I got to the door he hold me from behind and start to fondle me and stuff so I push him off and tell him, ‘You done know I don’t play that crap’.
“He started holding me down so I start to fight back and the more I fight back the harder he hit me. He was like beating me in my head with his fist and then he hold me and slam me into the refrigerator like a rag doll.”
She said it was then that she managed to escape because the fridge was close to the door.
Cry for help
??“I got out and ran through the gap calling for help. I ran across the road by the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and I called my best friend and told him what happened and then I called the police emergency number.”
She said the police arrived in about two minutes.
“I went across the road to them and the driver did all of the talking. I told him what happened and he asked me if I ever had sex with this guy. I said, ‘No’ and then he asked me if I was a lesbian.
“That really ticked me off and he wanted to know if I hurt so bad and this man beat me up so bad why I ain’t gone to the hospital. I told him, ‘Well I call the police first’ . . . ,” she added.
She said the officers then drove to her alleged attacker’s home while she walked over there.
“The policeman asked the guy if he had ever had sex with me and he said, ‘No’ and he warned him to keep away from me,” she related, adding that the other police officer went into the house and retrieved her bag and keys.
“I just wanted to go home and I ask the officer, ‘Please can you give me a ride home’, and he say, ‘But you ain’t answer my question yet’. I wasn’t even studying that kind of way and then I click and he said, ‘Remember I ask you a question back down the street and you ain’t answer me yet’.
“I said ‘Are you going to give me a ride home or not, because I know the law’. He said, ‘I don’t give two . . . what law you know’ and he told me that I ain’t really want no drop home because I ain’t answering his question. I said, ‘Fair enough’. I turned around and I proceeded to walk so I tell myself the safest place for me to walk was to my workplace, which was nearby.
When she got to her workplace, a warehouse, the woman said she immediately telephoned the police Operations Control and complained about the police officer to the dispatcher.
“She put me through to a station sergeant and when he came on the phone he was just as disrespectful as the police officer. He tell me if I really was about to get rape and I get beat up so bad wuh happen I ain’t in the hospital and blah! blah! blah! I was, like, are you serious?”
When a NATION team arrived at her home, the mother of three sons was lying in bed, her eyes puffy and red from crying and her neck stiff and swollen.
Still in pain
??She was still in pain and said she did not go to the doctor because she just wanted to get home.
“I would like to find out who this policeman is and I would like to have some disciplinary action taken against him because if this is what the Barbados Police Force is coming to, we are in a real sad place . . . ,” she said.
When contacted, Inspector David Welch, the force’s public relations officer, said he was not aware of the incident but advised the woman to make a report with the Police Complaints Authority or the Office of Police Responsibility so that the matter could be investigated.
