PSB, PCA probe teen’s chopping

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Sascha Wilson

The Professional Standards Bureau (PSB) and the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) are investigating a report that a police officer chopped a teenaged boy on his head with a cutlass during an exercise in Palo Seco last week.

Representatives from both agencies visited the 16-year-old schoolboy and his mother, Clover Vargas, at their Frazer Trace home last week after the incident was highlighted in the media.

Clover said the two PSB officers were very thorough and remained at her home for more than five hours.

However, the PCA’s representative’s visit left her feeling upset and uncomfortable.

She said he had a negative attitude.

“He telling me the cut is three inches and how he sure is not a police officer, the aggressiveness had to be a soldier and he sure is not a Santa flora police do that. Those things do not concern me,” she said.

She said he did not take any notes or statements.

“He said he would get the information from Standards Bureau,” she added.

Vargas said her son, a Form Two student, was still experiencing slight pain.

On January 26 the teenager was at his uncle’s dam a short distance from his home when around 6 pm he saw the police.

He said they came in several vehicles, were wearing masks, dressed in tactical and camouflage clothing, and armed with cutlasses and firearms.

The teenager was heading home when one of the officers called him. He said he walked across and said good evening, they asked him his age and then told him he was a youth man.

He said one of the officers told him, ‘Yuh body language alone showing me your rudeness,” and another officer tried to pull up his pants.

The teenager recalled, “I say, ‘wait, I will pull up my pants for myself.’ Then after that, a set of them start to surround me and while them surrounding me, one of them that was in front of me put a blade on my forehead. I move the blade from on my forehead and as soon as I move the blade from my forehead he chop me on my head.” The teenager ran home and his grandmother took him to the Siparia Health Facility where his head was shaved and he received ten stitches.

The grandmother then took him to the Santa Flora Police Station to file a report. They did not receive a receipt. But, Vargas said on Sunday the police dropped off the receipt at their home.