An angry Court Street vendor is filing a Police harassment complaint after she and her friends were taken into custody on Christmas Eve in a "Communist-like swoop'' on her stall.

She and two women helping her were strip-searched by Police while a child belonging to one of them, a seven-year-old, waited in an interview room, she claimed yesterday.

Miss Shay Lake said she had been harassed by local authorities since returning to Bermuda two weeks ago from a simple buying trip in New York City.

But being "publicly humiliated'' in town and then being strip-searched the night before Christmas was the last straw.

Police in a statement yesterday insisted their officers had acted "appropriately''. A spokesman pointed out a man in Miss Lake's company was arrested for alleged possession of heroin following the raid.

But Miss Lake said, "I know there is a lot of crime going on but they are harassing the wrong people.'' She said her Christmas season nightmare began on December 11 when she was stopped by airport customs agents who believed she was importing drugs, she said.

After finding nothing in her luggage, she was taken to hospital by narcotics officers for an X-ray which also proved negative.

And if that was not enough to ruin her homecoming, the Police, instead of taking her back to the airport or driving her to St. George's where she lives, dropped her and her luggage off at National Stadium because they had rugby practice, she claimed.

Such "harassment of innocent persons'' was fuelling the public's poor perception of the Police Force, she charged.

She said the worst came after she set up her stall of ethnic clothing, hats and jewellery on Court Street to take advantage of last-minute Christmas gift buying.

Miss Lake said she had made sure to first secure the appropriate peddler's licence from Government and was looking forward to doing a booming trade.

At about noon, a Policeman showed up and said he was investigating a complaint from a nearby shopkeeper that her stall was blocking the road.

However, after checking her permit and seeing it was in order, she said he left.

A Police spokesman confirmed yesterday that the officer had concluded in his report that she was not blocking the road nor committing any other offence.

The real trouble started when two other Police officers, a male and a female, showed up also claiming to be investigating the complaint.

"I said Police had already taken care of that and she (the officer) looked really startled,'' she said. "Then they said `we're going to have to search you'. I said, `search what?'.'' The officers did not answer her question, she said. And soon after a van with about eight plain-clothes officers in it arrived on the scene.

"They snatched me and handcuffed a man whose car I was using to store back-up merchandise,'' she said. "They just swooped on us. I felt like I was in Russia somewhere.'' She was told to put all the merchandise in the narcotics van and she, her two female helpers and the child of one of them, were told to get in the Police car.

"No one gave me any reason. We were just told to follow orders,'' she said.

Some of her merchandise was ruined when the officers "threw it'' in the back of their van, she claimed.

At Hamilton Police Station, the three adult women were strip-searched separately by two female officers after waiting more than an hour.

"At first, an officer said `search 'em all','' Miss Lake noted, adding, "When the little girl with us looked up and asked, `are we in jail Mommy?', that was it for me.'' Miss Lake said that after she and her friends were let go by a senior officer who arrived on the scene, she tried to make up for her lost vendor business in the little time left until dark and then returned to the Police station to see about filing a complaint.

"They told me the reason for the incident was to check my peddler's licence,'' she said.

However, she was not questioned by any of the officers from the van and they had checked her peddler's licence on Court Street and seen it was in order, she said.

Miss Lake said she met with her lawyer Mr. Archie Warner yesterday afternoon to draft the complaint.

Miss Lake noted that while she was in the search room, "I heard voices in the background. There seemed to be confusion as to why we were here.'' From what she could gather, a Police detective had ordered the raid on her business, she said.

She added she thought the Police may have "been after'' the male friend whose car she was borrowing. However, she had "never'' been in trouble with the law. She said she had been "humiliated'' and lost business from the incident.

"I felt like I was in a Communist country being swept off the street like that,'' she said.

A Police spokesman said the Force did not as a policy comment on official complaints. However, since one had not yet been filed, P.c. Gary Venning said: "The Police officers involved appear to have acted quite professionally and appropriately under the Misuse of Drugs Act. I should also point out that a male who was in the company of Miss Lake was found to be in possession of drugs believed to be heroin.'' The spokesman added, "If Miss Lake feels she has been treated unreasonably she is entitled to make an official complaint which will be investigated.'' "HARASSED'' -- Court Street vendor Miss Shay Lake claims Police took her into custody on Christmas Eve and strip-searched her and her helpers for no reason.