Schoolboy: I was beaten by cops

A FORM THREE student of Cocorite will miss two exams today since he is hospitalised with a ruptured intestine after allegedly being beaten by police officers. Told of the incident, Police Commissioner Gary Griffith yesterday said he was unaware of it and asked the teen's relatives to make a formal report on the incident.

Justin Arjoon, 15, of Farfan Street had to undergo surgery last Thursday after the beating which took place on Carnival Tuesday at Ariapita Avenue. In granting Newsday permission to speak with her son yesterday at the Paediatric Ward of the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex in Mt Hope, mother Allyson Teesdale sat at his side and also spoke on the incident.

"Right now I wanna cry," Arjoon said just before doing just that. "Just so them lash me and I didn’t do nothing. I was asking them what we do. One of them, he had on a serious face."

He recalled that being near Murray Street Woodbrook around 9 pm on Carnival Tuesday just as police had stopped the music allowing people to head home. On their way home the group of young men with him began arguing with a man who claimed he was related to a girl they were with.

While doing so, Arjoon said he and a group three others were surrounded by police and questioned on what they were doing and where they were going. The teenage girl left with the man and the rest of the group were quizzed.

During the interrogation, Arjoon said they were being poked in their stomachs by an officer using a nightstick and repeatedly asked why they were not home. One officer, Arjoon said, who is tall, well built, deep-voiced and with a low beard, struck him twice in the stomach and once in the back while asking if he was involved in crime.

Arjoon said that as he was being beaten, he kept asking what he did wrong. The youths were then taken to the Woodbrook Police Station. An officer at the station, seeing Arjoon was bent over in pain, said he would take him to hospital.

His mother, Allyson Teesdale, who was at his bedside since last Thursday, said she became worried on Ash Wednesday night after her son kept vomiting. The next morning he was taken to the St James Medical Complex where doctors examined him and found that his intestine was ruptured. Surgery had to be done.

"Police is to protect not brutalise people. First time out alone and look what happened (to my son). He usually goes out with us. How can I trust a police man now? If he tells me he wants to join the police service, I will say no. Those are things going through my head now," Teesdale said as she demanded justice.

“I can't understand this, if they hit him once and send him home, ok. But three times? When my child was on the operating table I was not sure he would have come out alive,” she cried. Arjoon was given two weeks sick leave from school and his parents visited the Woodbrook Police Station where they were advised to report the matter to the Police Complaints Authority.

They have not done so as yet as yesterday was the first day Arjoon was able to speak to them long enough to record a statement. Head of Port of Spain Division, Snr Supt Floris Hodge Griffith, who has jurisdiction over the Woodbrook Police Station, told Newsday she was not told of the incident and the boys' detention at the station may not have been documented.

She added that the officers, who Arjoon said were in tactical wear, may not even be from her division. On the circumstances surrounding the teen's beating, Hodge-Griffith said police officers don't go about beating citizens without cause.

Contacted for a response yesterday, Commissioner Griffith said he was not aware of the incident and d advised the family to file an official report. He said he is willing to meet with Arjoon’s parents. Arjoon said if he was not recovering from surgery he would have been playing sports and “tracking girls.”