Odell Newton said she lodged a complaint against the officer with the Complaints and Corruption Branch of the Royal Bahamas Police Force. She showed the Guardian a letter from the Corruption Unit dated August 25, 2005 acknowledging her complaint and promising that in “due course” they would inform her of the results of their investigations.
However, one year later, and Mrs Newton, who claims she suffered a dislocated disc in her neck when the officer allegedly slapped her, is still waiting for results.
Now, Mrs Newton is working with an attorney to bring the officer to justice and to make him pay for her medical expenses and attorney fees.
Mrs Newton said she was falsely charged with “obstruction” by a police officer from the Nassau Street Police Station, after he allegedly brutally slapped her on the left side of her face.
She claimed the obstruction charge was “pinned” on her by the officer after he realised that he attacked her and that the assault was not warranted.
“The police officer was exchanging words with my aunt outside my residence and I had put my hands in the air and laughed, because I didn’t know what was going on. This is when the officer came from standing in the car door and pushed me into the police car,” Mrs Newton told the Nassau Guardian. “I asked the officer what is it that I did and he told me that I had stuck my middle finger up at him. I told him that I did not do that.
“While I am suffering with pain and have to take medication to go from day to day, I don’t want him to think that he is going to just walk away from what he did to me because it was wrong.”
And I am not going away because my pain and suffering is not.”
According to Mrs Newton, she was placed in a room at the station, where she told another officer that she was unlawfully brought into the station.
At this particular time, said Mrs Newton, the officer who had brought her into the station drew his right arm back, as if he was going to punch her, but instead gave her a “brutal slap” to the left side of her face.
“The other officer who was sitting in the room didn’t say anything. He just watched as I was slapped,” she said. “And after I was hit by the officer, he left the room and came back about 15 minutes later and said that he was charging me with obstruction.”
A doctor’s report issued by the Public Hospitals Authority indicated that Mrs Newton received a soft tissue injury to the left side of her face. The report further disclosed that she was seen eight days later by a physician after complaining of numbness on the left side of her face as a result of the injury.
Mrs Newton said she was forced to take a large number of pills prescribed by her physician, so that the pulsating pain she experienced in her neck and back, and severe migraine headaches she had on a daily basis, could be eased.
She explained that she hired an attorney after being charged with obstruction; however, because the officer did not appear before the judge on two occasions, Mrs Newton was cleared of the charge.
By: LaShonne Outten, The Nassau Guardian
