Chief Magistrate defends police after assaulted wife asks that husband not be remanded

Chief Magistrate Ian Weekes has made it clear that The Barbados Police Service cannot be expected to solve people’s personal problems and address major crime at the same time.

He expressed that view on Tuesday after a woman, whose husband assaulted her, said she did not want her spouse to go to jail and only needed him “to be warned”, after being told that he would be remanded to Dodds Prison.

“The Barbados Police Service tries consistently in domestic matters. They sacrifice their time and effort . . . and after all of their effort, sometimes the complainants change their minds. So the system cannot blame The Barbados Police Service,” Magistrate Weekes said.

“I have also said that a large percentage of The Barbados Police Service’s time is spent on dealing with domestic matters, and the public needs to be fair to them because they can’t expect to be solving people’s soap powder problems and when major crime occurs they are expected to be there.”

The comments came out of a case against Alric Alfred Bascombe of Deacons Roads, St Michael. The 42-year-old pleaded guilty to assaulting Terriann Bascombe on August 21, occasioning her actual bodily harm.

Station Sergeant Crishna Williams, in outlining the facts, revealed that the wife has a retail clothing store registered in her name. On the mentioned date, she was in the shower when a quarrel with her husband began over getting his name on the business account. 

When he did not get a favourable response, he slapped her and accused her of trying to carry away his money. The altercation continued with the man grabbing his wife by the neck and reportedly threatening to kill her, in the presence of their children. 

One of the children intervened and the woman got away. Her husband then took up a cutlass and rushed at her, but their son got between them to stop the fight.

In his explanation to the court, the man said that in 2018, he came up with the idea to create an online store, and following COVID-19, he and his wife of 15 years, along with his brother, decided to open a physical store. An account was subsequently set up, but only the wife’s name was on it. 

On two occasions, he said, the money was “short” on the account and his wife gave an explanation, but he kept asking when she would go to put his name on the account. 

“We keep talking to get the account settled . . . but she keeps pushing it back,” Bascombe said.

He said he approached his wife in the shower that day. 

“I told her that not fair, and I push her, and we start to scuffle,” he said, adding that at one point, his son intervened, but the altercation continued, and he “ran to the back, but the back door was locked”. 

“The cutlass was at the back door with the hammer . . . . That was just to back her off,” he added.

After hearing him, Chief Magistrate Weekes told Bascombe he had a challenge with him “putting your hands on your wife” and described as “strange” the issue with the account.

“You can’t put your hand on the woman . . . . I got a problem here with people putting their hands on people . . . . You need a rest up . . . St Philip,” the magistrate told Bascombe.

The wife, who was in court, explained that her husband’s name was not on the business account because she had not had the time to do it. When it was first done, she explained, he did not have Barbadian citizenship.

When the chief magistrate said that he would remand Bascombe for the assault, his wife said she did not want that to happen.

“I really believe that The Barbados Police Service always takes licks unnecessarily and they have to defend themselves. All something has to do is happen, and the police are criticised, but nobody remembers the level of sacrifice they are investing every single day to rescue these family situations with a lot of dysfunctional families,” he said.

In the end, he instructed the man to move out of the family home for a week for a cooling-off period. Weekes also ordered Bascombe to undergo anger management and take part in the Partnership for Peace Programme.

Counselling was also ordered for the couple and their children.

The matter will come up again for review on September 15. In the meantime, Bascombe is on $4 000 bail.