The family of slain Pinewood resident Deron Bethel cried out for justice last night after another son – himself a policeman – was allegedly beaten up by plainclothes officers.
Corporal Dwayne Bethel was left nursing a gaping gash in his head after allegedly being gunbutted outside his own police station by force colleagues from another unit.
Yesterday, talking with The Tribune, Corporal Bethel, who is attached to the Carmichaei branch of the CDU, relived the Saturday night attack which left him with a visible bruise to his forehead and a four-inch gash on-top of his head which needed 30 stitches.
“I pulled up in the Carmichael Station yard around a quarter to twelve,” said Corporal Bethel. “I didn’t see the unmarked police car that I normally use, but I knew two officers were working. So I thought one might be o’ out, and the other would have been in. I knocked on the window of the office, which is in the back of the building.
The officer said that when noone came to open the door, he returned to his van, and sat in the vehicle listening to music. About five minutes later, he said three men armed with Uzis and sub-machine guns approached him in the van.
One of the men, he added, shone a light in his face, and it was at that point that he recognised one of the officers.
According to Corporal Bethel, at no time did any of the officers identify themselves and, because he recognised the one officer who was shining the flashlight, he did not think much of the matter and thought it was all a joke.
“I thought he was just clownin g around,” said Corporal Bethel. “The other two walked around to the front of the van, and one of them came and said something to me.”
Corporal Bethel, wearing a tam on his head at the time to get over the flu, said that he did not really hear what the officer said to him, but realised the men were seriously accosting him when one of them “forced” his hand inside the vehicle, “grabbed my keys, opened my door, and grabbed me out.”
At that point Corporal Bethel, whose van has large airbrushed pictures of his deceased brother on both sides, said he and one assailant began fighting.
He said that everything was happening so quickly that he was not able to identify himself to the officers.
“Right after he pulled me out and we started hassling, he took the sub-machine gun and he hit me once in my head I heard the other officer behind me shout something, but I wasn’t paying attention,” said Corporal Bethel.
“It wasn’t until I heard what sounded like a weapon being cocked behind me that I took my eyes off him. When I took my eyes off the one officer to see what was being cocked in the back of me, he hit me two more times.”
Corporal Bethel said that officers from inside the station came running out and shouted to the three plainclothes officers that the person they were beating was s corporal who worked at the station.
It was only after the men stopped beating him and he was able to take off his tam that officers said anything to him, he added.
“They started saying, ‘Man cop, that’s you. We didn’t know that’s you. You ain’t saying nothing. You ain’t saying nothing,”‘ said Corporal Bethel.
Saturday night’s brutal beating, took place one day after the Bethel family appeared in court to testify in proceedings looking into the April shooting death of Dwayne’s brother Deron.
Nathaniel Charlow, a former officer who was said to be attached to the Oakes Field CDU, has been charged with the killing.
A spokesman for the Bethel family, Mr Felix Bethel, claimed there was nothing coincidental about this weekend’s beating of Corporal Bethel.
“It is passing strange and it borders on the incredible that he would be sitting in a van that is well-marked, and they know is well-marked, with the image of Deron ‘Sharky’ Bethel. It is no coincidence, and it could not be a coincidence,” Mr Bethel said.
“He (Corporal Bethel) was authorised to be there and he was not breaking any laws. He was assaulted by three men, and the fact that these men happen to be police officers only raises an extreme concern about the ordinary citizen going about his business,” added Mr Bethel.
“The fact that Dwayne Bethel happens to be a police officer does one thing: it illuminates the fact of police brutality in the Bahamas. A police officer is brutalised in front of the police station by police officers, and we are calling on the Commissioner of Police to rein in police officers who are obviously so poorly trained and so illdisciplined that they can harass the Bahamian citizen as he goes about his ordinary business,” said Mr Bethel.
The head injury that Corporal Bethel received required two layers of stitches, with ten used to close the top layer of the wound.
The Tribune was unable to reach senior police officers for comment.
By MARK HUMES, The Tribune
