The Tribune

By JADE RUSSELL

Tribune Staff Reporter

jrussell@tribunemedia.net

A WOMAN says a uniformed police officer let a man who pulled a gun on her drive away from a Prince Charles Drive nightclub, then took the phone she had used to film him.

Alphonique Strachan, 27, said the incident, partly captured in videos that went viral yesterday, left her fearing for her life. Instead of protecting her, she said, the officer seemed more concerned with protecting the man she accused of threatening to blow her head off.

Ms Strachan had identified the armed man as an off-duty officer. In a statement yesterday evening, the Royal Bahamas Police Force said he was not a serving member of the force. Police also said no official complaint had been made about the incident and encouraged anyone with information or concerns to make an official report.

Ms Strachan said she tried to report it at two police stations within hours. She said officers at the Elizabeth Estates Police Station told her the matter was outside their jurisdiction and sent her to the Fox Hill Police Station, telling her to speak to a senior officer there and show him her recordings. She said she arrived at Fox Hill around 4am and played the senior officer the videos. When she asked about filing a report, she said, he told her officials from the inquiries department would contact her. She said no one had done so by press time yesterday.

The police statement said the woman claimed an officer intervened to de-escalate the situation. It did not address her allegations that the on-duty officer allowed the armed man to leave or took her phone.

Ms Strachan said the incident happened around 2am yesterday outside 316 Bar and Lounge.

She said trouble started inside the club when her male friend danced with the armed man’s girlfriend. The two men began arguing, and Ms Strachan and her friend left. Her friend stayed outside with a uniformed officer who was on duty in the area. That officer is the one Ms Strachan later accused of letting the armed man go. He advised her to fetch her car so they could get away before things got worse.

As she walked to her car, hoping only to get home safely, she said the man got out of a jeep carrying a gun.

She alleged the armed man threatened to “blow” her head and her friend’s head off.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she said.

In the commotion, she said she went back to the on-duty officer and told him a man had pulled a gun on her. She alleged the officer’s manner changed once he walked over to the jeep and recognised the armed man. She claimed the officer did not search the jeep for the gun and let the man leave.

Ms Strachan said the on-duty officer then took her iPhone after she recorded the incident and told her to collect it from the police station. She has not got it back.

At the Fox Hill station, she said the senior officer immediately phoned the on-duty officer. She claimed the on-duty officer told him the gun was a “pumper”. According to Ms Strachan, the senior officer accused the on-duty officer of lying about the weapon, pointed out that the armed man was holding a semi-automatic gun and said he was “clear as day” in the footage. She said the senior officer reprimanded the on-duty officer, whom she described as a rookie, and questioned why he had not filed a report.

The on-duty officer never came to the station with her phone, she said.

Ms Strachan recovered her recordings because her iPhone synced to her iPad through iCloud, where the videos automatically transferred. She showed police the footage on the iPad and posted several clips on Facebook, which had been shared more than a thousand times by press time.

In one video, the armed man, wearing a white T-shirt, coin chain, gold grill and grey shorts, is seen holding a gun. A man believed to be his brother and a woman believed to be his older sister stand nearby, appearing to try to calm him down.

“I don’t play games,” the armed man shouts.

He then walks to the jeep and puts the gun inside. Ms Strachan is heard saying: “You pull a gun” and “You pull a gun on me.”

The armed man walks towards her, repeatedly asking: “What you telling me?” Another man holds him back as he repeats: “I don’t play about my little brother.” He tells Ms Strachan he is ready for “anything you ready for”. The woman believed to be his sister is heard pleading with Ms Strachan to leave the situation alone.

In another video, people are gathered outside a yellow building. A uniformed officer is holding someone’s personal documents as Ms Strachan explains to him that she had told him she recorded a man pulling a gun on her. Another woman approaches and asks to speak with the officer. A man is then heard asking that woman why her peer lashed out because he hugged her.

As the officer walks away, another man asks whether the armed man is “straight”. Ms Strachan asks how he could be considered “straight” when she has footage of him allegedly threatening her with a gun.

The officer walks towards the jeep, which is surrounded by a group believed to be the armed man’s friends. The armed man gets into the jeep with the woman believed to be his sister and others who came with him to the club.

Ms Strachan is then heard telling the on-duty officer, now walking with another officer, that she told him the man had pulled a gun on her but he still let him leave.

“I just want my phone back because I know once I get the video, I’ll be able to go to complaints and corruption,” she told The Tribune.