AfriKa CRY BLOOD

by PHILLIPPE AIMEY

I want to state categorically that the Police Force does not enforce the law by targeting any groups. We carry out our duties without fear or favour and with sensitivity. We are willing to engage with any group in the society. We are the Police Force of Barbados and all communities.

- Commissioner of Police Darwin Dottin, SUNDAY SUN April 25.

RASTAFARI profiling is real!

So say members of the Rastafarian community.

But it goes beyond the police force, they said in an interview with the SUNDAY SUN last Friday. Such profiling, they say, extends to the main social institutions and it is a problem that will not go away easily, unless the movement is endorsed fully by the Government.

“This has not now started and it will not finish anytime soon. Outside of the police force, there is profiling within the education and health system and even our own families.

“This is and has been a reality for us,” said Sister Asheba Trotman, chairperson of ICAR and co-chair of the Caribbean Rastafari Organisation (CRO). Read the rest of this entry »

READERS OF THE NATION’S online edition have mostly empathised with the call by Ras KudosSage-I to stop the profiling of members of the Rastafarian religion.

Speaking at the African Liberation Day celebrations, KudosSage-I, a representative of the Ichirouganaim Council For The Advancement Of Rastafari (ICAR), spoke of the “scourge called religious intolerance, which the Rastafari community finds itself head to head with”.

He called “on our brothers and sisters in faith to help us to combat this scourge and this offspring called Rastafari profiling”.

On NATIONnews.com, some readers shared their own experiences of profiling.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Barry Alleyne

THE ROYAL BARBADOS POLICE FORCE has started an official investigation into the behaviour of the Maloney family after a controversial verdict last month by Coroner Faith Marshall-Harris.

Emotions ran high in the courtyard on April 24 after the coroner deemed that the former Barbados Exhibition winner I’Akobi Maloney had died by misadventure at Landlock, St Lucy, last June 17, the same day he resigned from his job as an engineer at the Arawak Cement Plant.

Verbal Insults

Members of the family, along with members of the Rastafarian community, were on hand for the verdict, and a number of verbal insults and threats were allegedly hurled at police on duty in the courtyard.

Sergeant Wingrove Headley, one of the two policemen who were on duty when Maloney died, and who testified that Maloney ran from them and jumped off a 50-foot cliff to his death, was also in the courtyard and was allegedly the subject of insults and threats.

A reliable source informed the WEEKEND NATION that all the police on duty within the confines of the courtyard that day have been required to give official statements to a superior officer, in an effort to determine if any members of the Maloney family, or the Rastafarian community, went too far with their verbal outrage and, in so doing, broke the law.

“We are doing an investigation. I would rather not comment any further,” said Assistant Superintendent Curvan Harvey yesterday, the man in charge of the investigation.

Maloney’s legal team said yesterday the news of such an investigation was disturbing.

The family’s attorney-at-law David Comissiong said: “The family’s legal team has not been informed of any investigation into its [the family's] actions, but should it be so, that would be very unfortunate.”

Comissiong said emotions were very raw that day and the environment very charged.

Heart-rending

“The responses of the family, as expected, were heart-rending. One would have anticipated the police would have had the maturity to understand the situation and empathise with family members,” he added.

Comissiong said the decision to investigate the matter further was surprising since Commissioner of Police Darwin Dottin had “offered an olive branch” to the Rastafarian community, saying he was willing to meet with them.

by YVETTE BEST

A CALL has gone out to all faiths to help stop Rastafari profiling.

Speaking at Monday’s celebration of African Liberation Day in Jubilee Gardens, Ras KudosSage I said it would call for people to speak in one voice.

“As we set about to eliminate the remaining vestiges of racism, let us be mindful of the fact that there is another scourge called religious intolerance, which the Rastafari community finds itself head to head with.

“And we are calling on our brothers and sisters in faith to help us to combat this scourge and this offspring called Rastafari profiling,” he urged.

The representative from the Ichirouganaim Council for the Advancement of Rastafari (ICAR) said his brothers and sisters were still being persecuted.

“Rastafari finds itself in a position where we are continually persecuted for the way we practice our worship and for the very things that define us as Rastafari,” he said.

Noting that the African black man was similarly persecuted and rose from that position, Ras KudosSage I said “it is my hope and dream that Rastafari will do the same”. Read the rest of this entry »

by Phillipe Aimey

APOLOGISE!

That’s what members of the Rastafarian community want the Royal Barbados Police Force to do before there is any meeting between the two bodies to discuss a long list of issues.

This was only one of the conditions outlined by the Justice Committee at a Press conference held at the I’Akobi Youth Resource Centre, Tweedside Road, St Michael, yesterday.

It was called to respond to Commissioner of Police Darwin Dottin’s invitation to meet and discuss the issue of “Rasta profiling”. Read the rest of this entry »

I’Akobi Tacuma Maloney, 23, of Hutson’s Alley, Reed Street, St Michael, died on June 17, 2008, at Land Lock, St Lucy. The circumstances of his death were investigated by the Coroner’s Court and recently, Coroner Faith Marshall-Harris in her verdict said his death was due to misadventure. The following is Part 6 of an edited version of the verdict which began on Monday. It concludes in tomorrow’s DAILY NATION.

ONCE AGAIN, Walkes, who was particularly sensitive to the situation and who had conveyed as much by way of the time-honoured gesture showing that someone is deranged, asked why he was on the cliff and he said he was under a lot of pressure. Walkes asked him why, Maloney said his back was hurting him…

Walkes then wanted to know from Maloney if he had ever seen a psychiatrist. Headley took Maloney’s ID which had been found in his wallet and went to the van and reported to Operations Control. He told Operations Control that he believed that Maloney’s faculties were not intact and that they would bring him in…

When Headley returned, he told Maloney that he would like him to accompany them to the police station to interview him. These may have seemed like ominous words to a young man of extreme sensitivity… Read the rest of this entry »

I’Akobi Tacuma Maloney, 23, of Hutson’s Alley, Reed Street, St Michael, died on June 17, 2008, at Land Lock, St Lucy. The circumstances of his death were investigated by the Coroner’s Court and last Friday, Coroner Faith Marshall-Harris in her verdict said his death was due to misadventure. The following is Part 4 of an edited version of the verdict which began on Monday. It continues in tomorrow’s SUNDAY SUN.

MALONEY HAD certainly never mentioned any personal problems, any problems with work colleagues or with cement dust and sinusitis nor articulated any problems working at Arawak, apart from the temporary status.

Once again the resignation was a total surprise and he thought the response, “I am taking responsibility for my back”, sounded totally unlike Maloney.

It now appeared to Adesegha that when Maloney came to his lab that morning briefly and then left with his bag to see Collymore he had already made up his mind to resign.

Approximately 10:15 that morning, Maloney called his mother who was at her usual spot in Holetown under the trees close to the taxi stand. The conversation between them, as reported seems contradictory. She reported that he said “Mumz, Mumz, Mumz, I feel real good, I fire the work. I was here in Speightstown for a while just checking the scenes and it feels boring and monotonous. Read the rest of this entry »

The question of how I’Akobi met his death has still been left unanswered after approximately 10 months of deliberations both inside and out of court. Although the coroner had dismissed the idea of I’Akobi going to the cliff with the intention of taking his own life, the verdict of misadventure is still debatable.

In her context it was defined as the act of running from the police which inadvertently resulted in his death. Our family vehemently refutes the coroner’s claim in this regard; as the act of running towards what the police perceived to be a 60 ft. drop head first with hands outstretched in this ‘mad’ dash for freedom quintessentially describes the act of suicide.

Although the coroner removed the police’s postulations of why he had taken his life that being (depression, homosexuality, madness and drug association), she inadvertently or intentionally accepted the single report submitted by Headley and Walkes as the irrevocable truth. Read the rest of this entry »