By AZARD ALI Tuesday, September 29 2009

THE State has been ordered to pay two children $135,000 for being locked in a police cell for a night.

The children were just four and six years old at the time when they were locked in a cell in the Rio Claro Police Station where they slept an entire night.

In awarding them damages and costs, Justice Humphrey Stollmeyer chastised the police officer who did it and said that the children ought not to have been even brought to the station.

The children were four and six years old in 1999 when they were arrested by police officers. It was at about 8 pm on September 28, 1999, when police officers went to the home and first arrested the children’s parents — Rameshwar Baldeosingh and Zalina Mohammed. The parents and the sons — Ryan and Riaz, were bundled into the police jeep and taken to the station.

In a 21-page judgment delivered in the San Fernando High Court recently, Stollmeyer explained that Baldeosingh was placed in a cell and so too was his wife, Mohammed. The children, the judge stated, testified that after about two hours waiting in the charge room for their parents to be fingerprinted, they were put into a cell. They were just four and six years old.

Stollmeyer stated: “Ryan Mohammed says that after about two hours he and his brother were put into a cell containing a small bed, a mattress and a sheet, leaving their mother in the room where she was being fingerprinted. The (children) fell asleep on the bed and woke up at about 6.30 am the following morning when they were taken to their aunt, Lisa Mohammed,” Stollmeyer stated in his judgment.

Baldeosingh and Mohammed were charged with larceny of certain items, but the case against them was dismissed in the Rio Claro Magistrate’s Court. The husband, wife and children filed a lawsuit against the State for wrongful arrest and false imprisonment which Stollmeyer adjudicated upon.

Attorney Lisa Francis represented the family.

In awarding damages of $135,000, the judge stated, “There was clearly a deprivation of their liberty throughout the night. They could not go anywhere. They were far too young to do so on their own. It is no excuse for the defendant (police officer) to say they were held for safe-keeping until they were given into the care of relatives the next morning, as I have already concluded. They should never have been taken to the police station in the first place.”

The judge, who found that Baldeosingh was beaten by police officers, also awarded him $12,500 in general damages and $10,000 in exemplary damages.