Release our son

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

The par­ents of 16-year-old Jay­lon George, who is the first mi­nor de­tained un­der the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE), say he is in­no­cent of the al­le­ga­tions made against him by the po­lice.

Ac­cord­ing to the pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­der (PDO) re­lat­ed to George, he was “cred­i­bly iden­ti­fied by con­fi­den­tial in­tel­li­gence as a mem­ber of the Ras­ta City/Sev­en Gang.” The or­der added that George is a “shoot­er for the gang” and has ac­cess to a cache of high-pow­ered firearms and am­mu­ni­tion in­tend­ed to be used to ex­pand the gang’s ter­ri­to­ry. It fur­ther claims that he and oth­ers plan to im­mi­nent­ly car­ry out re­tal­ia­to­ry shoot­ings against ri­val gangs in pub­lic spaces, mak­ing his de­ten­tion nec­es­sary to dis­rupt these plans.

George is cur­rent­ly be­ing de­tained at the Youth Train­ing and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (YTRC) in Arou­ca.

The on­go­ing SoE was de­clared by Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress what na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies warned was a rise in gang ac­tiv­i­ties. At a me­dia brief­ing last Fri­day, Gold Com­man­der DCP Suzette Mar­tin said 39 peo­ple had been held un­der PDOs since the start of the lat­est SoE, with 16 ap­proved at the time. To date, none of these PDOs have been gazetted, as was done dur­ing the pre­vi­ous SoE.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, George’s par­ents, Mar­lon Ward and Lis­lles George, said their son, a form three stu­dent of St Joseph Sec­ondary, is miss­ing out on end-of-term ex­ams and his de­ten­tion is af­fect­ing his men­tal health.

“I just want my son to come home. He can go to school. He can fin­ish what he has to do, fur­ther his ed­u­ca­tion, my son be­ing there is play­ing with he men­tal,” his fa­ther said.

George’s moth­er, who shares a birth­day with her son, said she is trust­ing God to keep him safe while he is de­tained.

She said, “I don’t want to think about it, but it’s sad and it’s hard. I don’t want to break down, I want to be strong for him, you un­der­stand? But, God is good. God is good!”

Ward added that his son is con­cerned about cel­e­brat­ing his gold­en birth­day on May 17 in de­ten­tion.

“My son has to spend his 17th birth­day in de­ten­tion and he hasn’t been charged. So why he in there if he is not be­ing charged? If he was charged, then we could say, well, yeah, un­der the SoE, but he’s not charged.”

Prison of­fi­cials said yes­ter­day that Jay­lon is be­ing housed in a dor­mi­to­ry by him­self, as it is im­prop­er to place him with re­mand­ed and or con­vict­ed mi­nors at the YTRC. He is the sec­ond mi­nor this year held at the YTRC un­der a PDO, af­ter an­oth­er child was housed there dur­ing the last SoE that end­ed in Jan­u­ary.

The par­ents added that their son is not in­volved in any­thing il­le­gal. Ward said his son was ar­rest­ed on March 7 while in the com­pa­ny of four oth­er men, three of whom were ar­rest­ed while the own­er of the home, where they were held, was re­leased. He said any­one ac­cus­ing his child of wrong­do­ing is ly­ing.

“My son don’t have no crim­i­nal record, he nev­er been con­vict­ed, he don’t have no pend­ing mat­ter, noth­ing like that. At the end of the day, my son is 16 years, he have some friends that is 16, 17 years who he does be lim­ing with... It may have things that peo­ple may say about my son, they can’t prove what they say about my son.”

He added: “My son home all time. If he not home, he’s right there in Bam­boo Trace where he does be lim­ing with his school friends. I can’t stop my son from go­ing out and lim­ing with his friends, they are youths. They can lime with each oth­er. As long as he not lim­ing with no­body that I know do­ing wrong things, I can’t, I won’t stop my son.”

Jay­lon’s at­tor­ney, Steven Maw­er, said he was ar­rest­ed with oth­ers for be­ing in pos­ses­sion of a gun and am­mu­ni­tion. His par­ents say they were told he was held with am­mu­ni­tion but de­spite their in­sis­tence on see­ing the am­mu­ni­tion, they nev­er got the chance.

Ward said he cam­paigned on be­half of and vot­ed for Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der and af­ter his son was ar­rest­ed, he called and mes­saged him for as­sis­tance to en­sure he was not de­tained for at least 90 days, which is the pe­ri­od the SoE can go on for. How­ev­er, he said those at­tempts were un­suc­cess­ful.

Guardian Me­dia al­so called and mes­saged Alexan­der on the mat­ter but up to press time, they went unan­swered.

The par­ents, who vis­it­ed their son yes­ter­day af­ter his first night at the YTRC, said he was “do­ing good” con­sid­er­ing his cir­cum­stances. They al­so claimed their son was beat­en by po­lice and are call­ing on them to charge him with an of­fence rather than have him re­main de­tained. Ward, said with his son de­tained, he is forced to “pray for the best and ex­pect the worst.”