Last week, 56 year-old Mark Terry, a fisherman from Belize City, visited our 7News office to complain about what he describes as police harassment. He says that several decades ago, he left Belize to live in California, but has been back home for many years now.
And according to Terry, he's being harassed by police who he believes are wrongly profiling him as a criminal. He says that he's been going fishing at Rock Park for several months, and that's when the sustained police intimidation started. That's until several days ago, when he had an escalated confrontation with a police officer over a borrowed machete that he was trying to return to its owner.
Terry claims that in that confrontation, the officer confiscated the machete from him, and actually flogged him over his upper back with it, just because he disagreed and insisted that he wasn't doing anything wrong. Here's how he described the incident to us:
Mark Terry
"They keep stopping me and harassing me for no reason, and I asked them if it is racial profiling. One of them told me, like this. He said, where are you going. I said that I'm going to go fishing. So, he jumped out the truck, and he told me, I don't like your attitude. I told him, I don't like your attitude either because you shouldn't jumped out the truck. I told you - you asked me exactly where I was going, and I told you I was going fishing."
"The first time they stopped me, he told me like this. He said, well, go back to America because if you're in Belize, we're gonna keep searching you."
Reporter
"Now Mr. Terry, are you a part of the crimes going on in this country at this moment?"
Mark Terry
"Never been apart of no crime. I left Belize 1980, and I had no crime record. I didn't have a scratch with the police station."
Reporter
"At any time, have they given you any reason why you were being detained."
Mark Terry
"He told me that he was detaining me for the machete, but he didn't want to detain me just then. He took the machete and put it in the truck. I told him that's for someone, and I'm taking this machete tonight to the owner because we're going fishing. He told me that he was gonna charge me for this. I said, well charge me because I have to get back the machete to the owner. They jumped in the vehicle, and I told them that they can't take the machete. So, I said, you're treating me like an asshole (Lance, please beep this profanity) He jumped out and said that I'm using verbal language against us, so we're gonna take you. We're going to charge you for the machete and for the verbal language. When we got to the station, I stood at the front desk, and I said, aren't you going to charge me for the machete, and whatever you're gonna charge me for? So, he told me, boy, let's go to the back, and I told him, go where? He grabbed at me like this, in the back of my shirt, to pull me. And I told him don't grab me in my clothes, please. I told him wherever you want me to go, I'll go, and that's when he hit me with the machete in my back."
"If you come being deported or however you came, they're going to do you the same thing. They're gonna figure that they can get away with it. I don't want them to get away with this."
Terry insists that he intends to report this police officer to the professional standards branch, and he wants to aggressively pursue his formal complaint.
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