Justice still denied: the continuing ordeal of Joshav Grant

Two years have now passed since a police bullet changed Joshav Grant’s life forever, and still justice remains elusive. The promising young athlete, now 23, walks with a cane – a stark reminder of that fateful January 2022 traffic stop that shattered not just his body, but his dreams of a future in basketball.

None less than the Barbados Police Service – by its continued failure to charge him for a single offence from the events of January 7, 2022 – maintains his innocence. Yet the very same institution has failed to provide accountability for the actions of its officers who fired that life-altering shot.

The situation has grown more dire. Grant’s attorneys Kyle Walkes and Neville Reid report they are no closer to obtaining justice for their client, who remains unable to support himself financially. The legal process stands at a frustrating impasse with familiar notes of bureaucratic sloth: the Solicitor General’s Office is awaiting a file from the police before the matter can proceed – while a young man’s suffering continues.

The Bill of Rights of the Constitution of Barbados–the document the administration is currently canvassing for an upgrade–is not silent, even if the authorities are. Under the fundamental rights and freedoms of our supreme law, Grant, like every one of us, has a right to life, liberty and security of the person and the protection of the law. Yet these rights ring hollow as he struggles daily with chronic pain and disability, supported only by his family’s goodwill.

There remains no evidence, and no denial of Grant’s recollections, that he was either the subject of a lawful arrest or attempted to evade detention.  It bears repeating that as with every other motorist in this country, mannerly or maddening, there was simply no justification for a hail of police bullets from a traffic stop. None.

We justifiably feel outraged as we scroll through the doom that is the story of often racialised policing of citizens, particularly in the United States. That anger should then be doubled for this young Barbadian’s story, as it continues to unfold without resolution or remedy.

While we wrestle daily with the violence at the hands of far too many young people. But there is another side of that coin: an inherent bias against young people in poor and urban areas. We also note that in the interim, soldiers have joined the police in pointing guns at citizens in the name of fighting crime. We are not aware of any training or conditioning that armed soldiers have undergone to participate in civilian arrests. We must also guard against prejudice and discrimination against any shades of difference on this island.

Two years is an unconscionable wait for accountability and justice on behalf of a young man whose future has been permanently altered.

Two years and no evidence has been produced that Grant posed a threat to the lives of armed police officers. He failed to stop immediately on the sound of a siren. No court of law would consider this an act of evasion, meriting a bullet to the back.

We contend that two years of continued inaction–coupled with the appearance of soldiers in camouflage and with automatic weapons on our streets–only pave the way for the next Joshav Grant. That is a price that no one should be willing to pay. Yet here we are, two years on, with a young man and his attorneys to plead once again for justice that remains disgustingly out of reach.

We ask again, what is the point of a renamed police service if its old name of “force” remains in its nature? What is the point of a republic if constitutional change will not result in robust and effective systems for the consistent protection of human rights?

If we are to keep this republic it must not only be in documents and commission hearings; it must be seen as heard for the least of us, ordinary, law-abiding folk like Joshav Grant. No other citizen should face such a fate for minor infractions. The officers responsible for protecting us must be held to the highest standards afforded under the law. And if those standards are not high enough, it is past time to change those, too.

If we persist in doling out unequal laws, we cannot predict who the next Joshav Grant will be.