Police’s unprofessional stop and search leaves businessman concerned

A young businessman is calling on the police to act more professionally as well as ensure that they are always identified. This is following an incident with the police that has left the young businessman feeling concerned.

The man who opted to remain anonymous in recounting the incident said that he was dropping his girlfriend at her home in downtown Georgetown when an unmarked vehicle cut him off on the road. The businessman said that he was parked as he watched the woman made her way into the home, he recalled seeing an unidentified vehicle but said no effort was made to get his attention. As he drove off, the vehicle cut him off, that startled him he said as he then tried not to collide with it, “while doing this the bus reversed and blocked me off, right now I’m focused 100% to see what is going on, four people jumped out of the bus, I could recall one or two of them in uniform.”

The businessman said that it was only after a few seconds then he realised these were possible police officers, “nobody identified themselves and say they are police when they exited the bus,” he said, “I assumed it was police.”

The man said he proceeded to turn on the lights in the vehicle after noticing uniform, “one of them put the magazine in the gun and cranked it,” the man recalled as he said one of the officers had the gun pointed to him and asked that he turned off the vehicle lights.

“At that point, two started searching my vehicle,” the man recalled, “I started even saying this, why ya’ll even doing this, they were like you were parking with your lights on and you see the police trying to stop you and you try to drive away, so I said, how I will know its police, you come and cut me off and jumping out with guns.”

The man said that he objected to the search since no one identified themselves or even asked to search the vehicle. He also objected to the two officers searching his vehicle at the same time as they were in different locations and he could not monitor them. He estimated that the entire incident, search included lasted for some half of an hour and only stopped when the officers noticed that the vehicle had a dash camera.

“The officer in charge asked if it is working, I said  yes, one of them went to check to see if it is working, but the officer in charge came in front and said I just wanted to know that you have an obscured license plate and that is why we stopped you.”

The young businessman said the incident left him feeling on uneasy as he said it left like the early 2000s when young Afro-Guyanese men complained of routinely being stopped and searched by the police. The man said too that if he was a holder of a licensed firearm, the headlines could have read differently as he recalled feeling under threat from an unknown vehicle who blocked him off on the road. He said at the time he did not know if he was being traced by bandits much less to think it was the police.

He called on the police to act more professionally in the execution of their duties as he feels some officers operate by driving fear into people all the time, “they do everything kind of lawless, they have protocols and they do not follow their protocols,” he pointed out, “they need carry themselves better and citizens would respect them more.”