AN­NA-LISA PAUL

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The moth­er of a 19-year-old man who was al­leged­ly struck by a fe­male po­lice of­fi­cer while rid­ing his bi­cy­cle in Port-of-Spain on Wednes­day is call­ing on the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to in­ves­ti­gate the in­ci­dent and en­sure jus­tice is served.

Jerlisa Jor­dan said the ac­ci­dent, which oc­curred around 5 pm at the cor­ner of Queen and Nel­son Streets, and the al­leged ac­tions of the fe­male dri­ver, be­lieved to be an off-du­ty po­lice of­fi­cer, amount­ed to an abuse of pow­er by a Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) mem­ber.

Mick­el No­ray, of Ram­di­al Lands, Mor­vant, was re­port­ed­ly struck by the of­fi­cer as he rode his bi­cy­cle across the in­ter­sec­tion.

The con­struc­tion work­er was on his way to St Paul Street af­ter pur­chas­ing a loaf of bread for din­ner.

Jor­dan called on Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der and De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge to in­ves­ti­gate all in­stances of al­leged abuse by po­lice of­fi­cers.

She re­called hear­ing the im­pact of the col­li­sion as she walked along the street, un­aware the vic­tim was her son.

As peo­ple shout­ed to alert her, she said, “The dri­ver come out she car by the cor­ner and run round the back and run up on my son.”

She claimed the dri­ver shout­ed at No­ray, “You is a mad man, what you do­ing run­ning up on my car.”

Jor­dan al­leged that the woman then got back in­to her ve­hi­cle with­out ren­der­ing as­sis­tance, re­fused to call the po­lice or an am­bu­lance, and at­tempt­ed to dri­ve away.

Plant­i­ng her­self in front of the ve­hi­cle to pre­vent the dri­ver from leav­ing, Jor­dan said, “It was on­ly when the of­fi­cers ar­rived on the scene I get to re­alise the dri­ver is ac­tu­al­ly a po­lice of­fi­cer in plain clothes.

“I don’t know if she was on du­ty or not. She had civil­ians in her ve­hi­cle. She ain’t show no sort of re­morse. She was un­will­ing to call for as­sis­tance for him. She ain’t even say sor­ry or apol­o­gise to him.”

Jor­dan fur­ther al­leged that one of the re­spond­ing of­fi­cers threat­ened to ar­rest her af­ter she re­peat­ed­ly re­quest­ed the dri­ver’s per­son­al in­for­ma­tion.

She said her in­jured son was in­stead tak­en to the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Jor­dan, of­fi­cers in­formed No­ray that he could not make an of­fi­cial re­port with­out pre­sent­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. He re­turned home to col­lect his iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card, filed the re­port and then sought med­ical treat­ment at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

No­ray was treat­ed for in­juries to his head, chest, back and leg and was lat­er ad­mit­ted in a sta­ble con­di­tion.

Pro­vid­ing an up­date on his con­di­tion yes­ter­day, Jor­dan said, “I am just hop­ing and pray­ing noth­ing fur­ther de­vel­ops, as you know about whiplash and clot­ting. To­day (yes­ter­day), he had a blood clot in his eye which seemed to be mov­ing.”

Say­ing she on­ly had the dri­ver’s li­cence plate num­ber, she ap­pealed: “I am call­ing for jus­tice for my son be­cause his life could have been swept away yes­ter­day.”

Grate­ful that No­ray sur­vived the in­ci­dent, Jor­dan said the re­spond­ing of­fi­cers were wrong to dis­miss her con­cerns as a moth­er be­cause her son is an adult.

Jor­dan, a com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist who works to im­prove the stig­ma­tised neigh­bour­hood, is af­fil­i­at­ed with the Hearts and Minds Pro­gramme. Al­though she is well known in the area and fa­mil­iar with many of­fi­cers in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, Jor­dan said she was not con­demn­ing the en­tire TTPS but was dis­sat­is­fied with the dri­ver’s al­leged con­duct.

“Some of­fi­cers will make it bad for the oth­er of­fi­cers.”

De­spite her con­cerns, she said she is pre­pared to al­low the po­lice to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter fair­ly.

A se­nior of­fi­cial at the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion yes­ter­day con­firmed that a re­port had been made and in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the ac­ci­dent are on­go­ing.