MANDEVILLE, Manchester – Sally Porteous, the deputy mayor of Mandeville, has expressed concern at the ‘threatening way” in which the police handle young male suspects.

“If the police continue to terrorise people, it doesn’t get you anywhere in the fight on crime; what you do is you build up resentment and turn whole communities against you,” Porteous told the Observer yesterday.

Porteous’ comments came after a disturbance in the Three Chains community in this town on Tuesday, in which the police allegedly threatened to shoot a young man who allegedly had a gun on his person.

Porteous alleged that the police had said they would be going into the community over and over again to terrorise the people until the gun was handed over.

She added that while she was not trying to stop the police from carrying out their duties, the manner in which they do so “must stop now”.

But the Mandeville police said they were not aware of any misconduct on the part of the police.

Sergeant Rovan Salmon, the liaison officer for the Constabulary Communication Network (CCN), told the Observer that the police went into the community to recover a stolen gun, which was stolen from a security after a motor vehicle accident in the vicinity of the Three Chains community.

He said the police, acting on information, raided Three Chains Tuesday morning, but that the situation “turned ugly” when residents started to demonstrate.

Porteous said the demonstration was because the police took a young man, whom they suspected of having a gun, to the back of a house and threatened to shoot him, and residents, claiming the man’s innocence, refused to leave the police alone with the man.

Meanwhile, Sergeant Paulette Knight of the Mandeville police said the man accused of using indecent language was held during the operation, charged and released. No suspect has been held in relation to the stolen gun, he said.