Silver Stars alleges police assault at TRIBE launch

Sil­ver Stars Steel Or­ches­tra has de­fend­ed the ac­tions of its mem­bers fol­low­ing an al­ter­ca­tion with po­lice dur­ing the TRIBE Launch Cup 2026 event, in­sist­ing its play­ers were vic­tims of an un­nec­es­sary use of force stem­ming from what it be­lieves was a mis­un­der­stand­ing over event per­mit re­stric­tions.

In a state­ment is­sued by the band's man­age­ment, Sil­ver Stars said the or­ches­tra has built its rep­u­ta­tion on dis­ci­pline and pro­fes­sion­al­ism and has al­ways co­op­er­at­ed with law en­force­ment.

The or­ches­tra said it had orig­i­nal­ly been sched­uled to per­form ear­li­er dur­ing the event but, be­cause of de­lays, was in­struct­ed to per­form at the end of the pro­gramme. Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, the band was un­aware of any per­mit re­stric­tions af­fect­ing the per­for­mance.

Sil­ver Stars said that short­ly af­ter it be­gan play­ing, po­lice of­fi­cers en­tered the band and in­struct­ed mem­bers of the rhythm sec­tion to stop. The state­ment al­leged that a uni­formed of­fi­cer phys­i­cal­ly re­strained the band's drum­mer by hold­ing his hands, forc­ing him to stop play­ing.

The or­ches­tra fur­ther claimed that a man in plain clothes, who did not iden­ti­fy him­self but whom mem­bers lat­er be­lieved to be a po­lice of­fi­cer, shout­ed be­fore de­lib­er­ate­ly throw­ing one of the band's in­stru­ments to the ground.

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, when a band mem­ber at­tempt­ed to re­trieve the in­stru­ment, he was as­sault­ed by the uniden­ti­fied man be­fore oth­er of­fi­cers joined in. The or­ches­tra al­leged that the con­fronta­tion caused sev­er­al steel­pans and stands to top­ple, trap­ping some play­ers be­neath them and leav­ing sev­er­al mem­bers in­jured while caus­ing sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to in­stru­ments.

Sil­ver Stars said the in­ci­dent un­fold­ed in less than a minute af­ter the per­for­mance be­gan and main­tained that no mem­ber of man­age­ment was ap­proached be­fore po­lice in­ter­vened.

The or­ches­tra de­nied that any of its play­ers be­haved ag­gres­sive­ly or re­sist­ed in­struc­tions to stop per­form­ing. It said the dis­pute could have been re­solved through dis­cus­sions with event or­gan­is­ers or band man­age­ment rather than con­fronting mu­si­cians di­rect­ly.

Sil­ver Stars de­scribed its mem­bers as young, law-abid­ing cit­i­zens who have ded­i­cat­ed much of their lives to the steel­band move­ment. The or­ches­tra said it re­mains com­mit­ted to work­ing with law en­force­ment but can­not ac­cept what it de­scribed as the un­war­rant­ed abuse of its play­ers.

The band al­so thanked Chair­man of Pan Trin­ba­go Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore, Pan Trin­ba­go, TRIBE, mem­bers of the steel­band com­mu­ni­ty and sup­port­ers for their back­ing fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, ex­press­ing hope that greater re­spect would be shown to steel­pan per­form­ers and the na­tion­al in­stru­ment in the fu­ture.