Attorney claims child jailed after withholding cell phone password

A 12-year-old boy is alleged to have been jailed overnight by cops in Trelawny after he refused to comply with their demand for the password to his cell phone. That’s the claim from the attorney for the child’s family.

The series of incidents began in the community of Florence Hall, Trelawny, on April 24 and ended the following day, when the boy was released from the Falmouth Police Station without any criminal charge, according to Donnovan Collins, the attorney retained by the family.

The boy’s and his mother’s names are being withheld because of his age.

The mother of the 12-year-old is furious over the way law enforcement allegedly treated her son.

The allegations came hours after National Security Minister Dr Horace Chang and Police Commissioner Dr Kevin Blake publicly acknowledged that it was unlawful for police to demand cell phone passwords from citizens in random stops.

The acknowledgement comes amid reports of police personnel confiscating mobile phones during random or snap operations and demanding the passwords.

Blake said police personnel have been instructed to end the practice.

“It is wrong,” Chang said during a post-Cabinet press briefing at Jamaica House in St Andrew yesterday, blaming the deadly lottery scam as a possible reason for the practice.

The police commissioner was more forceful.

“It is not right, it is not legal, let me just say that clear,” he told journalists during the Jamaica House press briefing.

Alleged abuse

The mother of the 12-year-old, said her son was at home sleeping when police barged into the house.

Repeating her son’s account of the incident, she claimed that the law-enforcement personnel from the Lottery Scam Task Force demanded the password for his phone.

When he told them he could not remember the password, one of the policemen became angry and requested a belt “mek me get fi beat the bwoy mek him remember the password”, she claimed during an interview yesterday.

The mother claimed that when the 12-year-old insisted that he could not remember the password, the police ordered him to lie on the floor as they attempted to coerce him to give them the password.

“[One of the cops] set him dung pan him belly, put him pan him two elbows and tell him to hold his ears for five minutes,” she said of the alleged abuse meted out to her son before he was transported to the police station.

No production order

According to Collins, the police team did not present a production order from a judge that authorised them to obtain the cell phone password.

The mother acknowledged that the police indicated that “some lottery scamming is going on around the child”, but insisted that her son was not involved in any illegal activity.

Several calls to the Lottery Scam Task Force yesterday went unanswered.

The police commissioner noted, during yesterday’s press conference, that there is a process for police to obtain cell phone passwords, and said that this includes getting an order from the court.

“The process certainly is not coercing someone on that scene to give up their password,” he said.

Collins disclosed that the family is now in the process of filing a lawsuit against the State for false imprisonment and other constitutional breaches.

“Several rights have been breached, and he was abused and treated inhumanely by the police,” he charged.

The attorney welcomed the public acknowledgement by the national security minister and the police chief that the police cannot legally demand citizens’ cell phone passwords during random interaction, indicating that he has been retained by several persons who have encountered this practice.

“I was really concerned that this practice was being conducted right across Jamaica, and it appeared as if it was being endorsed by persons in the hierarchy,” Collins said.

livern.barrett@gleanerjm.com