Questions raised about police removing man from residence without court order

The actions of four police officers are being called into question following the eviction of a 25-year-old man in the early hours of Thursday morning without a court order.

At about 3 a.m., Kenrick Miller spoke with Barbados TODAY at Clarke’s Alley, Wellington Street, The City, who was locked out of the house he shared with his relatives for all his life.

He said it was 9 p.m. on Wednesday when one of two uncles who live at the same address accused him of leaving something in the toilet. He denied that it was him and an argument ensued and he was instructed to leave.

But after he armed himself with a stick to avoid being thrown out, his uncle called the police and said that he was being threatened.

The three men live in a house owned by Miller’s grandmother who was his legal guardian as a child and the mother of the other two men. Nearly 10 years ago, the mother of eight passed away without a will and no one has secured legal title to the house.

After an extended discussion with relatives, Kenrick said he went back into bed. Then sometime between 1 a.m. and 1:30 a.m., he saw a light shining into his bedroom. It was the police, from Central Police Station,  who took a statement from him and after speaking to the oldest of his grandmother’s children, who lives in Haggatt Hall, St Michael, informed him that he needed to leave.

“There were four of them who told me to hand over the keys and find someplace to sleep,” he told Barbados TODAY. “Yes, I pulled a stick, but I didn’t hit him or anything.”

As the drama unfolded, one of Miller’s aunts, who is the daughter of his grandmother and was opposed to his eviction, called a lawyer.

“The lawyer said that police should not be putting people out of a house at this hour without a court order unless they are making an arrest or enforcing a restraining order,” he recalled.

“I am not a man that gets frightened by anything, but [the police officers] are the law. So they put me under real pressure… because the police officers kept saying ‘Kenrick come out. Kenrick come out!’ So I just put my working clothes in my bag and came outside.”

The young man said he regretted the argument with his uncle and acknowledged that had he held his tongue, the situation may have played out differently.

“To me, I feel like I was unfaired…. I am not Bajan and that is why I keep to myself. But I was living here from the time I was eight months, living here as a baby. I went to primary and secondary school while living here,” he said.

When contacted on Thursday, Police Public Relations Officer, Acting Inspector Rodney Inniss, told Barbados TODAY that he would investigate the matter.

Legal documents obtained by this newspaper indicate that the young man, who was born in St Vincent and the Grenadines, was taken in as a baby by his paternal grandmother and raised in her house.

The young man remembered going to church with his grandmother and helping her with farming and selling vegetables in The City. But he also admitted an adolescent past in which he stole from relatives and at some point was held at the juvenile detention facility at Dodds, St Philip.

According to Miller, officers told him that in their opinion, if a person dies without a will the eldest child is allowed to take control of all assets. Making matters worse, he said, were suggestions from some of his aunts and uncles that they were not biologically related because the man whose name is on his birth certificate is not his real father.

“Everything that happened in the past I put behind me. All that I did, I was young. But I am 25 years old,” said the employee of Graham’s Wholesale. “I work. It isn’t much. I sometimes work three days in and out but that is how I get my little money in my pocket.”

Kenrick said during the COVID-19 lockdowns he was staying with a girlfriend and when he returned after some time away, he realised the locks on the doors had been changed.

“In the lockdown, he was out here sleeping on the cold concrete slab with a sheet and the police let him back into the house,” Miller’s aunt, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.

“But the police that came tonight are telling him that he has to leave. Although I showed them documents indicating that my mother was his legal guardian, they are saying that he has to leave, that he has no right in the house. But this is my brother’s child and I have the documents to show that my mother’s son, who is his father, was his legal guardian,” she added.

Miller said he had been paying a portion of the electricity bill before being put on the streets. kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb