…Police source refutes claim, alleges woman was drunk & bit cop
TWENTY-seven-year-old Odessa Seenanan of 8th Street, Diamond Housing Scheme, East Bank Demerara has accused police ranks at Diamond/Grove Police Station of harassment, reportedly being instigated by her husband.
Having since fled her home, moving to Berbice following an abusive relationship, she told the Guyana Chronicle that she is being subjected to the ordeal all because her husband of five years has been seeing another woman.
Odessa Seenanan shows lacerations to her left ear, which she said she sustained from her husband during one of the normal beating sessions.
In an interview with this newspaper, yesterday, Seenanan recalled being placed before the courts to face seven charges; but according to one police source, the woman has another charge coming her way, and this one is for damage to property.
She related that her husband has been physically abusing her, and the police at the station in the area do not respond to her complaints; but whenever her husband needs the police, they are at his beck and call.
She showed this publication some photographs of lacerations she had received at the hands of the man she had been living with for the past five years, and she said her children had witnessed the assaults. According to her, there are two houses on a plot of land, one which is owned by her husband, and the other which she and him built during their union. She said the man was given a restraining order to stay one hundred feet away from her, but he has been breaching that restriction.
The mother of two said that, last week Tuesday, she travelled from Berbice to the home in Diamond, but was not able to enter, since there was someone else with a child in the house. Although she was not able to see the other person, she was convinced that the woman was the new person in the man’s life.
She said she asked the woman to open the door, but the woman refused, and while she was trying to open one of the louvre windows, it broke. Shortly after, the police arrived in the company of her husband, and she was promptly arrested and taken to the East La Penitence Police Station, where she was charged and locked up.
She said the entire episode had been caught on a phone recording which the police took possession of.
According to Odessa, she was, and remains concerned that when the police arrived to arrest her, they came without a female officer, hence, she had refused to allow the male police ranks to arrest her.
Police details
Meanwhile, late yesterday afternoon, a senior police officer who is close to the investigation informed the Guyana Chronicle that there was a development involving the woman and her behaviour at a home in Diamond.
The police source, who is not authorised to speak with the media, informed that the police had not been ignoring the woman’s complaints, as she suggested, and that there is no evidence at this time to show that the police were being paid by the man to harass the woman.
This publication was told that the man the woman calls husband visited the police station and made a report concerning the development at his home, where the woman visited and broke windows of the house, while behaving in a disorderly manner. The source also stated that at the time of the entire episode, she was under the influence of alcohol.
The police source said the woman was not harassed by police officers who showed up to effect the arrest, and although male police officers had indeed visited to make the arrest, a female rank later arrived on the scene in response to a request for female back-up.
The police source, a senior police officer, informed that the ranks who arrested the woman were on patrol, but the source made it clear that nothing stops a party of male police officers from arresting females. However, when it comes to stop-and-search exercises and carrying out a search of any female who is arrested or detained by the police, that can only be done by female police officers.
The woman did not indicate to the Guyana Chronicle if the police had searched her, or had attempted to do so.
Odessa Seenanan was charged with four counts of assault. One alleges that she had bitten a peace officer, another alleges disorderly behaviour, another alleges threatening behaviour, and the last one alleges resisting arrest. She is still to be slapped with a charge of damage to property.
(By Leroy Smith)