A teacher and mother of three, who intended to resign on Monday, was subjected to inhumane treatment by male police officers while female cops observed as she was dragged out from a government building on the Caribbean Island of St Vincent.
The island administration has been engaged in an ongoing dispute with numerous educators on the island, with the most recent conflict involving a vaccine mandate case that will soon be set for trial at the privy council.
Shermaine Joseph-Barnwell stated that she visited the public service commission office on Monday to submit her resignation and was taken aback to find that the police had been summoned for this action. During the live video, Joseph-Barnwell stated that she was merely requesting the remaining vacation balance to be included in her resignation, and the situation deteriorated from that point onwards.
On Tuesday, Joseph-Barnwell, speaking on the Boom FM 106.9 OMG Show, said, “one officer proceeded to grab me around my neck and thrust me to the floor, then grabbed me by my hair while I was on the floor and dragged me, while another officer held my two hands, dragging me up the hallway. The officers dragged me from the top floor of the ministerial building to the platform at the front, which is where the tourism used to be”.
St. Vincent has the highest incidence of gender-based violence against women when compared to other Eastern Caribbean states.
In 2020, officials on the island documented a rise in multiple forms of gender-based violence, notably physical, psychological, sexual, and economic domestic violence directed at women.
Joseph-Barnwell stated that upon her arrival at the police headquarters in the capital Kingstown, she was accompanied by an officer to a cell. This experience was distressing, as she had to use a bottle as a makeshift toilet facility and subsequently mop the floor.
Although certain areas of the police headquarters have undergone renovations, the structure nevertheless shows signs of deterioration in various sections which was constructed in 1875 by the colonial government after the fire in 1866.
“I was taken to the central police station upstairs, I guess, which would be the CID unit. When I got there, a high-ranking officer led me to a room where a young man was detained. So, he opens the door, and he says, Get out. So, the young man gets up, and he gets out. And then the man literally takes his two hands and pushes me face down into the cell. My legs were still hanging out the door. He told another officer, drag her in. They drag the remainder of my body inside the cell. Then he slammed the cell door. I was not even allowed to go to the bathroom; I had to urinate in a bottle in the cell. I explained to them my husband does not know my whereabouts. So, I need a phone call. At least to my husband or my lawyer. I have a young baby, and I was not given the phone call”.
“My lawyer came in and saw the bottle of urine, and then he told them to let me throw it out. So that’s how they let me out of the cell to discard the bottle of pee (urine). and I had to mop up what was there.”
Joseph-Barnwell has expressed strong concerns regarding what she perceives as corruption within the Ministry of Education. She announced on the radio show that she intends to pursue legal action against multiple individuals involved in the unsettling incident that occurred on Monday.
In recent years, there has been an alarming rise in violence against women on the Caribbean Island, highlighted by the tragic murder of Luan Roberts, a family court counsellor, whose body was discovered in the back seat of a vehicle, wrapped in a bloody sheet. Seventeen-year-old Precious Williams was found deceased with multiple sharp injuries in a bag on the roadside, just minutes away from Kingstown, the capital of the island. Additionally, the body of Veronica “Keisha” Small was discovered in a mutilated state on the old airport runway in Arnos Vale, with a piece of PVC pipe inserted into her vagina.
Citizens are losing trust in the system.
The public’s trust in the powers that be is an important tool in helping to solve crime; however, citizens say the distrust was laid bare in relation to the death of Ceja Weekes and the wounding of Cornelius John.
Natasha Weekes, Ceja Weekes ‘mother, claimed in February 2022 that a police vehicle ran over her son on February 2 and that he died on February 6 at Milton Cato Memorial Hospital.
Weekes said her son was left paralyzed from the chest down and suffered a broken leg and spine following the incident with the police.
In August 2022, lawyer Jomo Thomas said the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sejilla McDowall, found after a long and exhaustive investigation into the death of Ceja Weekes that her office did not think any criminal liability arises.
In the case of Cornelius John, he had implicated a government senator when he was shot on his property in April of 2021. In May 2021, police commissioner Colin John said that Senator Ashelle Morgan and Assistant DPP Karim Nelson were persons of interest in the investigation.
In June of 2021, the DPP laid charges against Morgan, Nelson, and John, who was shot. In November 2022, Morgan and Nelson were acquitted and the case against John was dismissed.
The distrust goes further, with some members of the police force being accused of escalating situations rather than deescalating. The Police Commissioner’s speech for 2022, in which he urged law enforcement officials to improve, made this clear.
