Freeport, Grand Bahama — Bahamas Press calls on the Commissioner of Police to suspend immediately all police moonlighting services following the attack on a local citizen in Grand Bahama.
On Saturday 30th Oct. The Freeport News carried an alleged attack on a former employee of Sawyer’s Fresh Market. The employee, Kevin McKenzie, claimed he was brutally beaten and kidnapped by his employer, Sandy Sawyer, along with two other police officers, which at the time of the incident were employed by the proprietor.
Sawyer was formally charged on October 29th for the incident and is currently on bail.
According to the article in the Freeport News both officers to be involved in the matter were never charged, and we are told are still employed by the RBPF. Both officers worked as security guards for the food store and here’s just the beginning of our story.
The victim – according to the report – was accused of stealing a pack of ribs, which he [McKenzie] categorically denied when confronted by his employer. While being questioned on the stolen item, McKenzie said the proprietor assaulted him as he was joined by his two moonlighting police security guards. We are reliably informed both officers are also court prosecutors on Grand Bahama.
McKenzie was later ordered upstairs to a room in the store complex, where the two police officers and his employer interrogated him. According to Mckenzie the proprietor proceeded to slap and punch him continuously asking him where he got the stolen item?
“Mr. Sawyer then got up and come over, punched me in my face, and slapped me, so I was in fear for my life. I tried to get up out of the office, but one of the officers grabbed me and ‘lick’ me down and put me in a choke hold. Sawyer, then come and kick me in my mouth,” the victim told the daily.
“I am still having nightmares over the ordeal, and my ribs are swollen following the attack.”
The private interrogation we are told lasted for over two hours with McKenzie being continuously beaten and threatened with death by the men. Now this is incredible!
Days later Bahamas Press reported a shooting of a woman on November 5th. A gunman had opened fired on a relative of the same proprietor [Sandy Sawyer] as she returned home. BP reported the victim to be, Candy Sawyer-Laing.
We confirmed the businesswoman apparently drove from her home after being shot to the Coopers Service Station trying to seek help, before passing out in her vehicle. She was rushed to the Rand Memorial Hospital. Mysteriously, the police on the island, never reported the incident, and surprisingly to this day both officers in the beating of Kevin McKenzie have yet to see a court of law following that ordeal.
Bahamas Press is concerned and is baffled by crimes in this society, and its genesis played out in the community. How could two wards of the state find themselves employed by an establishment and be seen exercising justice upon another? Why would both police officers compromise their office as upholders of law, and in the seen breath, be paid by gangsters and mobsters to exercise their own double standards of lawlessness? It is no wonder the men and women in uniform are losing respect on the ground.
When we continue to allow police to be hired by “outsiders”, look what we are doing to the society. They become hired hit men, dressed in the tunic of the People as gangsters employ them. A good example of a GANGSTER is the notorious, STEVEN ‘DIE’ STUBBS, who is on bail for some three murders and was again recently released on bail for attempting to kill the head of CDU, and not a DAMN POLICE OFFICER dares to put him away!
Police should not be paid for private engagement while wearing the police uniform. We firmly believe police should not be doing security work, THAT IS WHAT SECURITY COMPANIES ARE FOR! They should not be using the public assets for escorting drug barons and their ‘pisstail’ stink *** children to proms.
Who could argue today that police presence deters criminals from acting out their aggression on society? That argument was put to rest when a gang of women surrounded the Police-in-Charge of downtown, Bradley Sands, and struck the hell out of him with his own cane right in the public square.
Or, how about that misfit and menace to society, “DIE” Stubbs, who went down recently to Central Police Station in the middle of the day and almost break up the damn jail forcing police backup to be called. No officer drew his weapon in that incident, and we wonder why?
Bahamas Press calls on the Commissioner of Police, Ellison Greenslade, the Minister of National Security, Tommy Turnquest, and the head of the Crime Council, Prime Minister Rt. Hon. Hubert Ingraham, to suspend indefinitely moonlighting by police officers in the Bahamas! We believe the idea has corrupted our officers and have compromised our system to a perversion unseen in the history of this country.
We call on the COP to arrest, fire and formally charge those two officers involved in the incident at Sawyers Fresh Market, who are alleged to have been involved in the beating of Kevin McKenzie.
