Basseterre, St. Kitts, October 18, 2018 – In the face of two reported incidents involving the Regional Security Services (RSS) now in St. Kitts and Nevis, the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party candidate for St. Christopher 8, Dr. Terrance Drew called Wednesday for the security forces to reject a recent statement to the police and army to “rough up the people.”
“The Prime Minister says they are here to help with the crime situation, but from what I witnessed last night (Tuesday), they are not here to help the country, they are here on to escalate it,” a male caller told listeners to Freedom 106.5 FM’s “Issues” programme on Wednesday afternoon.
The caller related that he witnessed “one of the RSS personnel slap off a young fellow last night. When I say slap off, l mean slap off, like when a father slap off his child at home. I actually heard and felt the slap,” said the caller, who said the incident took place in Cayon.
“When you back a dog in a corner… the thing is, that these same (local) police officers, when the RSS people gone back, they are the ones who are going to come and say ‘help the police.’ But how can you help the police when the police are beating up people like that?,” he said, adding: “I had a lot of respect for the Commissioner of Police (Ian Queeley), but I do not know if it is because of the Prime Minister (Dr. Timothy Harris) why he cannot do certain things, but he needs to step up. He needs to step up. They gave the army all this power with police powers, so why the RSS has to come in. The RSS should only be here when you have a State of Emergency.
Dr. Terrance Drew, who was on the programme, also told listeners he was informed of an incident involving the RSS when he was in the village of Keys on Tuesday night.
“A guy told me he was standing and he had on a short army pant (fatigue), when he was roughed up by a RSS patrol who took away his pants and he had to go home in his boxer,” said Dr. Drew.
Referring to a statement by Dr. Harris early last year for security forces to “rough up” civilians, Dr. Drew used the opportunity to call on the Security Forces and the RSS to reject that call by Prime Minister and Minister of National Security, Dr. Timothy Harris.
“Treating people inhumanely is not going to get the job done. I know most of the police officers, they are good people and good people in the armed forces also,” said Dr. Drew who added: policing is about building relationships and relationships would render good information and that information to solve crimes and to help protect the country and the community.”
“This ‘rough up’ advice from that Dr. Harris did not work in Jamaica. As a matter of fact, it led to a massacre and it also did not work in Trinidad,” said Dr. Drew.
“We need a new approach to treat people. To treat people inhumanely is not the way to go. Let us use good policing techniques and where there are abuses, let’s try to stamp them out and do what we have to do to protect our people without having to abuse our people in the process,” Dr. Drew, a medical internist said.