Early last Saturday morning while returning home from a night on the town, I had a frightening and life-threatening encounter with police officers, men who are sworn to serve and protect the citizenry and uphold the country’s laws.

At close to 5:00 am, while I was purchasing a bottle of water from a street vendor in Manor Park, a police patrol car pulled up next to mine with two cops who demanded, in most uncivil tones, that I pull over. I duly complied, expecting it to be nothing more than a matter of routine, but what subsequently transpired turned out to be a nightmare of gigantic proportions.

I parked my car in a nearby gas station and waited for the policemen to approach. They did not. Instead, they ordered me, from their patrol car, to “Get your documents and come over!”

When I produced my documents, one of them asked me if I had a firearm. After I responded “no”, one of them sought to inform me of my ‘offence’.

“We charging yuh with obstructing traffic,” he said. “But if you buy us refreshments we will drop the charge.”

I was dumbfounded.

Duly outraged, I refused to comply with their request and accused them of trying to bribe me.

This seemed to rile them into acute agitation, their faces a mask of anger. The cop in the driver’s seat alighted from the vehicle and yelled, “Ah bribe yuh ah try bribe we bwoy!” in an obvious attempt to make it seem that I was the one offering a bribe.

“We nuh want nuh refreshments, dutty bwoy!” said his colleague as he stormed out of the vehicle.

They then began to recite a number of offences – obscure licence plate, obstructing traffic, bribing policemen, etc – and informed me that it was a ‘payback’ for my refusal and subsequent accusation.

At this point, the gravity of the situation hit me like a ton of bricks. I had come face to face with the dark side of the law. The vendor was the only person in sight at this point, and he was arguably smart not to have said a word.

“God is watching you,” I said to the cops. “I am a journalist, and I will report you,” I added.

Then I specifically said, “I will tell Mark Shields” in a last desperate attempt to stop them.

They seemed to have cared less about my pronouncements initially, but what transpired next made me realise that they did indeed care.

When the vendor went back to his stall and was presumably out of earshot, I was greeted with a host of death threats from the policemen.

One of them, already parading with his automatic rifle, brandished his pistol and said to me “Mek one b….c…. report and we full yuh up with pure gunshot, bwoy!”

“Remember seh we know where yuh live!” he added, a clear reference to the fact that he had seen my address on my driver’s licence.

The other said: “You know where we come from, bwoy, we will kill you!”

I was scared silly.

“I just want to go home,” I told them.

However, one of them responded that I was not going to go home but that I was actually going to be arrested and locked up in jail instead.

“For what?” I asked.

“Indecent language,” he replied.

They then ordered me to go into their patrol car. I quickly dialed my parents’ phone and when my mother picked up I told her, “There are two corrupt cops in Manor Park who have accused me of bribery, other made-up offences and they have threatened to kill me. Now they want me to go into their car. Here is their licence plate number…”

After I read the licence plate number to my mother, the policemen ordered me to drive my own car to the Constant Spring Police Station. They drove their patrol car behind me.

When we arrived at the Constant Spring Police Station, we were greeted by a female sergeant at the front desk.

I immediately told the sergeant that “I did nothing wrong” and that the policemen were making “false allegations”. She was receptive up to the point when I told her that the policemen solicited money from me. She then spoke with one of them privately while the other went on a mission. After her conversation with her colleague, the sergeant suddenly started accusing me of lying.

“Stop the lies Mr Richardson,” she said. “Why are you lying on officers?”

I shook my head in disbelief. After my prior experience with the two cops, her actions did not surprise me one bit. However, what was noteworthy was that the bribery charge was mysteriously dropped. I was charged with “obstructing traffic” at 5:00 am, “no park light”, “obscured licence plate” and “indecent language”.

My parents eventually arrived and, fortunately, bailed me before I actually went into a cell.

The experience shocked me because of the fact that many of my close friends are senior policemen and soldiers, and I understand the challenges they face daily. However, I chose to publicise it in order to highlight the corruption being practised by a few members of the police force.