The Sandy Bay protest through the eyes of a tourist
TOM CONNOR, Delaware, USA
On Tuesday, November 19, I took a tourist shuttle from Negril to Montego Bay. We came to a standstill in a small beach town called Sandy Bay.
The townspeople had blocked the road with tyres, tree limbs, and concrete blocks. Women, men, and teenagers were holding signs that read 'End police brutality', 'One child dead, another fighting for his life'.
I was sitting up front, so I asked the driver to ask someone what was going on. A young girl told him police had recently beat up two high-school kids, with one dying and the other in intensive care.
Two local cops showed up at the roadblock. One was wearing a Kevlar minus a chin strap. The other had no headgear. They didn't try to clear the roads, but rather calmly listened to protesters who approached them. About a half hour later, police dressed in all-black with knee pads, M4s, and pepper spray, showed up (causing a fellow foreign visitor in the shuttle to cheer).
Shortly after arrival, they started firing rounds - presumably warning shots. They were coming from behind, so I couldn't tell if they were fired in the air, on the ground, or in the vicinity of anyone.
Then a few rounds came from 20 or so metres to the front, and I saw a half-dozen young girls and a few adult males running into the courtyard of a Baptist church rubbing their eyes and yelling in pain.
The police walked around for a bit, brushing folks aside, some holding their weapons by the handle, others with their fingers on the trigger, and one or two properly carrying their weapons at the low, ready with their trigger fingers properly placed.
Some of the crap was removed from the road and traffic started to flow again.