Four charged after altercation with police at Savannah band launch

Four peo­ple have been charged fol­low­ing an al­ter­ca­tion with po­lice dur­ing a band launch event at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in the ear­ly hours of Sun­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), of­fi­cers were on du­ty pro­vid­ing se­cu­ri­ty at the event and mon­i­tor­ing com­pli­ance with the con­di­tions of the en­ter­tain­ment li­cence, which re­quired am­pli­fied dance­hall mu­sic to end by 2 a.m.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers spoke with the event’s DJ be­fore the dead­line and re­mind­ed him of the li­cence con­di­tions. At ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2 a.m., the DJ com­plied with the di­rec­tive and stopped play­ing record­ed mu­sic.

How­ev­er, of­fi­cers lat­er ob­served live mu­si­cal per­for­mances con­tin­u­ing af­ter the stip­u­lat­ed clos­ing time. They then ap­proached rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the per­form­ing groups in an ef­fort to en­sure com­pli­ance with the li­cens­ing re­quire­ments.

The TTPS said that dur­ing those dis­cus­sions, sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als al­leged­ly be­came con­fronta­tion­al and ver­bal­ly abu­sive to­wards of­fi­cers. The sit­u­a­tion es­ca­lat­ed, and one po­lice of­fi­cer was al­leged­ly as­sault­ed while at­tempt­ing to make a law­ful ar­rest.

The in­jured of­fi­cer was tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where the of­fi­cer was ex­am­ined, treat­ed and lat­er dis­charged. Po­lice said the ac­cused per­son was al­so med­ical­ly ex­am­ined.

Four peo­ple were ar­rest­ed fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent and were charged on Mon­day with of­fences in­clud­ing ob­scene lan­guage, dis­or­der­ly be­hav­iour and re­sist­ing ar­rest.

One of the ac­cused was ad­di­tion­al­ly charged with as­sault­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer.

The four were grant­ed sta­tion bail and are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore the court on a date to be de­ter­mined.

In a state­ment, the TTPS re­mind­ed the pub­lic that of­fi­cers have a le­gal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­force the con­di­tions at­tached to pub­lic events and en­ter­tain­ment li­cences, in­clud­ing pre­scribed clos­ing times.

The ser­vice said it re­mains com­mit­ted to fa­cil­i­tat­ing safe pub­lic events but would not tol­er­ate as­saults on po­lice of­fi­cers or con­duct that ob­structs them in car­ry­ing out their law­ful du­ties.

The TTPS al­so thanked pa­trons and event or­gan­is­ers who con­tin­ue to co­op­er­ate with of­fi­cers and com­ply with li­cens­ing re­quire­ments, urg­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic to fol­low law­ful in­struc­tions so events can con­clude safe­ly and peace­ful­ly.