When Pauline Taylor and her three teenage daughters made plans for an evening out to have dinner after Hurricane Sandy left their home without electricity back in 2012, little did they know that a routine traffic stop would lead to a traumatic encounter with the police that still lingers years later.

During a sit down with the Jamaica Observer, Taylor shared the distressing experience of watching law enforcers, men and women, beat her oldest daughter who, at the time of the incident, was 19 years old and a student at the University of the West Indies, (UWI) Mona Campus.

“In October of 2012, right after the Sandy storm, because there was no light in the community, we decided to go out and have dinner. We were going to meet at a restaurant on Constant Spring Road. All three of my daughters were attending UWI at the time and I met them in Half-Way-Tree. We ended up taking a bus and because it was dark, the driver diverted unto Dunbarton Avenue. Police officers stopped the bus for a search,” she related.

On stepping out of the bus, Taylor said a female officer beckoned to her from across the road and asked to search her. “I stretched out my hand and she proceeded to search me and my bag. My daughters stepped out because we were near the doorway, and the female officer said, ‘who them gyal deh come off the bus?’ I said they are my daughters.”

Taylor said that the policewoman, whom she later found out was a constable, called over her daughter and proceeded to search her person and belongings. That was when things took a turn for the worse.

“My daughter had her hands outstretched just like I did, but the officer start handle her rough, old time people would a say ‘ragga ragga’. So I said to her why are you handling my daughter like that, you’re treating her like she is a criminal’. She say, ‘She a nuh criminal, she a prisoner. Put up yuh hand in a the air gyal’.”

The mother revealed that her daughter, who was studying Forensic Toxicology at the time, kept her hands outstretched, telling the constable that that was how she had learned a search was to be done.

“The officer go behind her and fling up my daughter hands in the air and say, ‘a suh mi want it’ but my daughter’s hands came back down to where she had it. The officer did that three times before grabbing her in the waist and spinning her around and grabbing her in the throat and said, ‘gyal you nuh hear mi say fi put up yuh hand in the air’. My daughter is a chronic asthmatic, so I don’t know if that was a reason, but she tried to remove the officer hand from her throat. My other daughter was across the road, Donae Taylor, and saw what was happening and she rushed and push off the police officer.”

By this, the mother said four other police personnel, including another woman constable, rushed across to them and started kicking and hitting her daughters. “I tried to cover them and the officers hit and fling me out onto the road,” she said.

After the altercation, Taylor said her daughters were taken to the Half-Way-Tree Police Station where they were charged with assaulting a police officer and disorderly conduct. The charges were eventually dropped, but only after having endured a three-year long court proceeding which left the single mother and her three daughters financially and emotionally drained.

“My daughters were the ones on trial. We never missed a court date and we were never late for the three years. But the officers them skipped court dates and would not give statements. That’s what happen when police do they wrongs and you try to get justice, they frustrate you. They use the system because they feel that they are so powerful against the law that judges all of us. We went through court for three years and I watched the police officers monopolise the court system.

“Financially it drained us because I had to pay lawyers’ fees, plus we had to take taxi up and down. There were numerous trips to the doctor because my daughter who intervened was crying for her neck. When I took her to the doctor and they found that her C1 and C2 (vertebrae) were dislocated. She was admitted at the UWI hospital where she was for a while and couldn’t move. We had to do everything for her. My daughter wore a caste around her neck for almost two years.”

Taylor said that her daughter’s schooling was delayed due to ongoing medical complications that came with the injury.

“After she came out of the hospital, she started having fainting spells. There were nights when I had to rush with her to the hospital. She had to take leave of absence from school for a year because she was still having fainting spells and she could not manage to carry her bag. Even now that she is back in school I think she is still traumatised and withdrawn because to have grown men beat you up after you lived a sheltered life, it was not easy on her. It wasn’t like it was people she knew and them have a confrontation.”

The mother also explained that she endured her personal trauma, having to deal with the stigma that came with persons in their community knowing about the charges laid against her children.

“Can you imagine I grow my children sheltered and this happen to them. When they would take the UWI bus in the early mornings when it dark I would go out there with them. Sometimes when my daughter would have class late, I wait on them at the bus stop. Sometimes all 10 o’clock at night I was out there waiting on them. And to imagine, there I was meeting my daughters at the bus stop every night, carrying them out in the morning saying I am protecting them, and to see men in uniform beat up on my pickney them, even now I can’t deal with it.

“Only my closest friends would know that I was embarrassed because it was a stigma on my children and a noose around my neck. There was a stigma from people who believed the charges against my daughters were true. I am also a chronic hypertensive person so my pressure never went down. The stress and the trauma came from knowing that people are hearing that my children assaulted a police officer and were arrested for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.”

She explained further that the charges were dropped because the officers gave conflicting reports.

“One of them said she saw a bulge in my daughter’s waist. My daughter had on a marina and a jeans pants that I made her wear that pant for three years to school, and I took it to court for the officer to show where the bulge was because she searched my daughter bag first but if you see a bulge in someone’s waist, you wouldn’t go through a process of searching her bag”.

Taylor, who had initially reported the incident to INDECOM, divulged that the agency had launched an investigation which led to the arrest and charge of the officers involved. However, they were later released on bail, and the case was dismissed.

“They say their motto is to serve and protect and to see the five men and the two women involved beat up my daughters was a terrible experience. Before, when I would see people on the news saying police do this and that, I used to say is lie them a tell on police. But it came to my door, not like a rock but like a boulder drop down on me.”

In spite of the horrific ordeal, Taylor said her oldest daughter managed to graduate from UWI with a Master’s degree in Forensic Toxicology, while her other two daughters are currently pursuing Bachelor’s degrees in Marine Biology and Bio-Chemistry.

“Thanks be to Jehovah, I didn’t lose any of my children, but I still feel like I lost them in the sense of the pain they suffered, and I think they were so angry. Even now they don’t want to talk about it. They just want it behind them because having a sheltered life and then to have this confrontation with police, it was like a tornado and I think they are still swept in the tornado.

“I keep asking myself, are these police officers humane because if they were, they would not have attacked my children,” said Taylor.