Dear Source:
This is an open letter to V.I. Police Commissioner James McCall. On Tuesday, Sept. 17, while going about my routine exercise on Airport Road, a friend and I witnessed an incident between former Senate candidate and V.I. Police Officer Ludrick Thomas and an elderly female driver that I wish to bring to the public's attention because of the callous nature the woman was dismissed.
It was about 6:30 p.m. and the woman apparently wanted to make a left from the Weymoth Rhymer Highway onto Airport Road, but it had been blocked off. Someone else would have quickly turned around and head back up the highway to take an alternate route to the airport but perhaps more because she was elderly than it was getting dark, she stopped in the middle of the road to get her bearings. Officer Thomas stopped his vehicle and could be heard rudely berating the woman for stopping in the middle of the road and then driving off. After he drove off, the woman still didn't move, so we recognized that she was in trouble and went to her aid. We told her that she would have to turn back around as that entrance was wrong. We stayed there as she tried to reverse but perhaps dazed by the incident, and more disoriented by the fact that it was getting dark, she was having problems turning the car around. At one point, she inadvertently backed into a retaining embankment. She was obviously having trouble so I approached and asked if she would like me to reverse her car and she quickly said yes, with a sense of relief.
We never got the woman's name but Officer Thomas is well-known to us because of his recent candidacy in which he pledged to be trustworthy. His actions that evening – intimidating an elderly member of the community as opposed to coming to her aid – not only showed otherwise but showed his obvious lack of sensitivity. I do not believe that this is the relationship that Police Commissioner James McCall had in mind when he pledged a change in business-as-usual.
June Smith
St. Thomas
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