Attorney Anthony Sylvester is taking up the case of the women police officers who were brought up on charges for their hairstyles. They all wear their hair natural, some of them in cornrows and braids - but the police senior command said the style contravenes Section 7 of the Police Standing Orders. So they were charged for willfully disobeying a lawful command - but the disciplinary action was suspended after they lawyered up.
Suspended but not cancelled, and now, they have lawyered up again to challenge the action in the Supreme Court. Sylvestre told us more:
Anthony Sylvestre, Attorney for Claimants
"The proceeding, they were suspended but they are still proceedings they can nonetheless be brought back. So what we have done is approach the court. We brought constitutional applications on behalf two of the officers and we are inviting the court to consider whether those proceedings that were brought were discriminatory and against the constitution because as you may know in our country persons ought not to be discriminated meaning they should not be treated differently because of their ethnicity, religion, or where they come from. so that our perspective is and the officers have in fact have actually post in their application that look we as black females, the texture of our hair is such that when we actually put our hair in dreadlock it is no different from someone who has a different texture hair growing their hair long. In the Police Department there are persons who are non-afro ethnicity who are able to have their hair whatever length they so wish. The question of whether these women because the mere fact that they are afro-ethnicity and that the texture of their hair causes the dreadlocks to be the way it is that such a treatment, because persons who have other similarly placed females in the department they have not been subjected to such an instruction or directive for them to cut their hair or to remove or shave their hair."
The matter was scheduled to go before Justice Sonya Young this afternoon for case management.
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