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Caye Caulker Manhunt Harasses
posted (April 4, 2012)
Tonight police are still looking for 16 year old Ernesto Bernardez - but the focus of the manhunt has shifted: police now believe that Bernardez managed to give them the slip and is now in Ladyville - where he reportedly has relatives.

This comes as some relief to the residents of the place called "Black Neighborhood" on Caye Caulker. As we've told you, those residents have been complaining for weeks about mis-treatment from police - police say the area is a hive of criminality: from drug dealers to armed robbers.

And since the Bernardez incident, "Black Nighborhood" has become the focus of the search for the teenager - who shot a policeman in the head - and put a gun to another cop's head.

Now, you will recall that last week a resident of that area was shot by a cop, and they lashed out at police - claiming discriminatory treatment.

Well now, they say police are paying them back. Many from the area have been detained, including a woman who is eight months pregnant.

She was held yesterday and released after 10 hours while her common law, Edwin Henry remains detained.

She told Monica Bodden her story today:..

Perisa Aldana, Claims Police Harassment
"About 9:30 the ADU officers came and they just start to break down the door. After that we came out and then put their guns on my boyfriend and they told him to put up his hands. He put up his hands and on the way down the stairs they kick him down and they start to beat him on the ground."

"I didn't like that due to my condition. They didn't need to come like that, they could have come in a respectable way to us to open the door and take him if they want to."

"When they put him in the pick-up pan they beat him and punch him in his face. When I saw that I start to cry out, then they just drove off with him."

"Yesterday morning when I took food for him about 7:30, when I got there I drop off the food for him then I went to buy food for me; when they saw me buying food they called me. When I went there they told me that I was under arrest also and they have to keep me here. They kept me there from the morning to the night around 8:30."

Monica Bodden
"So you got detained also? For what?"

Perisa Aldana, Claims Police Harassment
"They had me for questioning."

Monica Bodden
"So your boyfriend is still lock-down?"

Perisa Aldana, Claims Police Harassment
"He is still lock-down. It is hard for me because I don't have any family out here. So it really hurt me to know that they have him so long."

Monica Bodden
"What do you want?"

Perisa Aldana, Claims Police Harassment
"I think it so wrong that they beat him like that. They don't need to do people that. They can come in a nice way but don't beat up people like that. I have a condition and I don't like it."

Other residents of the Black Neighborhood on the Island are also claiming that they are being "chanced" by the police.

Juana Rodriguez, Claims Police Harassment
"Well right now it is very devastating with the police. The police come to the back here because someone grazed a police officer with a gun. They are saying that everything that happens is from back here."

"It is revenge because the young man that got shot last week is my cousin. But we don't have anything to do with that. It is people that are not from around here come to this island and make this island hot. The police come to the back here thinking that it is those young men from back here."

"When the police come back here and see the young men hanging out they would out them on the ground to lie down and they would kick them and call them words."

"Those things are wrong because children live back here. My daughter already knows what is happening because the police come from nowhere and just run in your house."

Monica Bodden
"You are saying that police thinks that it's some sort of retaliation behind this area because of the young man who got shot by a police officer last week?"

Juana Rodriguez, Claims Police Harassment
"Yes ma'am, that is what they are thinking and that is what they are saying. They come back here and say that they are retaliating back here because of what happen with the young man."

"We are still hurting because that didn't need to happen either. That thing that happen with that police officer Valerio - he was one of the nicest police officer on the island. We didn't expect that to happen. But at the same time we don't know the young man who did it. His picture is all over Caye Caulker."

Monica Bodden
"You all don't know him?"

Juana Rodriguez, Claims Police Harrassment
"We don't know him. We never saw him before. He is not from this hood. Everybody that walks through we know because there is only one lane here and it is this lane that we are standing on."

Police on the island have declined comment.

And stay tuned because Monica Bodden will have more from Caye Caulker later as she speaks to the owner of the Dive Shop that took out those tourists who drowned yesterday.

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