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~Vēġó~ wrote:I really feel an extremely strong resentment towards these leeches of society.... EXTREME resentment, dare I say HATE, but that may be too strong of a word.....I am supposed to see good in everything, but when one sees things like this it makes it really difficult to do so!!!!
nismoid wrote:But wait!!! the fat man who robbin the driver, aint he the same one called "gorkin" who is being hailed as a hero now on nelson street? I could be wrong eh! but he looks like him to me
All’s quiet on Nelson Street front
Published: Tue, 2011-09-06 20:59
Gail Alexander
It’s steaming hot, not always orderly, but no less colourful. As other types of views go in the capital these days, it is also just as mixed—alternatively belligerent, pleading or apprehensive—regarding the state of emergency as in various other “hot spot” areas. Yesterday, after Parliamentarians spent three days in the Red House palavering over extending the state of emergency, a number of Nelson Street’s youthful residents faced magistrates in the courts around the corner from Parliament. Several blocks across town their neighbours, friends, relatives and associates were watching life go by in the broiling midday sun.
The east Port-of-Spain community of National Housing Authority apartment blocks was among the first areas where persons were detained in search and seizure exercises by security forces. Now, two weeks into the emergency and heading into a three-month stretch, Nelson Street is adjusting to life with sporadic police raids. Yesterday, limers were in their usual spots. People looked out from balconies.
Within the heart of the blocks, most areas of the “Gaza” (a female resident’s term) were quiet. People were hanging about in various corners. The owner of a 24-hour parlour on the street, says: “At least I could open longer now with this (reduced) curfew. I couldn’t do no business at all last week.”
Pushing back long semi-straight dreadlocks, the man in white T-shirt and red track pants related how he has seen Nelson Street change from the time he was born there in 1957 to date. He says: “I remember goat used to be passing and pigs was in the Dry River. Personally I don’t mind the emergency. We older, we don’t be out much. But the setta people they picking, they poor, they is just pawns in the game. “You have to worry about how things being done and how the police and them handling it apart from breaking down people door. “My brother in Belmont had a house-breaking. He ask the police who come to see him about taking evidence for forensic checking. You know they tell him ‘dat is for TV.’”
He adds: “We have a Third World police force. So you have to worry about police might be dealing with who ‘squealing’ with information on them self.” An older gentleman in a pink polo shirt and a neon green vest over it, exchanges a Muslim greeting with a shorter man, wearing thick gold chains heavy enough to sink the Hyatt. “I living around here or else I wouldn’t be able to wear this,” the younger man explains.
“I don’t like the crime situation that was going on before but I don’t like what going on now either.
How do you differentiate gangster from an ordinary man? “Two weeks ago somebody else might have robbed me or robbed you or might have had a little cocaine to sell. But those persons’ means of living are being taken from them with the state of emergency and their mentality changed. Is like losing your job, they become desperate.”
He adds: “If Kamla claiming to take them out as she say, how will they do that? There are so many core problems in this situation. “Yesterday I saw a little boy hiding his toy gun and I’m sure this is learned behaviour as he might have seen an older person doing recently.”
The older man warns: “You will get enemies trying to clean up what they (police) leave back.” Further around the courtyard, a slim female, hair plaited wearing the standard male uniform —white vest and three-quarter shorts—is also sporting the type of heavy gold jewelry as the young man.
She’s slim to the point of being flat-chested. Tattoos on her left arm are faded. Serene and smiling occasionally, she doesn’t say much but her girlfriend, who looks at her adoringly, is angry: “They take my brother, he only 19. Dey say he in a gang. The boy home sleeping, just so, they take him!” the girlfriend declares.
Steps away, a group of women and toddlers are sitting around with a lone male who hides neither his concerns with the emergency nor his homosexuality. “They should call a snap election now, though! We doh see these people til election time and then we getting free jersey we could buy weself, he says. Cheryl, who looks all of 21, makes an appeal with the sadness of someone older than her years.
She’s just come from the court where her brother appeared earlier. Cheryl says about 25 persons from Nelson Street were detained. “We glad the crime stop, people in the area glad, yes, but is how they picking up everybody, innocent and guilty. They should do it the right way not crashing in people place,” says Cheryl. “I frighten,” she adds, claiming that after taking pictures of some security forces drinking in a bar, she received a message not to “go on TV and talk again.”
“We hope Kamla put some sort of training in the area for girls too, not just boys. From 17 up who ent going to school. We need it in the community centres here,” Cheryl adds.
Her friend, in a bright pink top, is fretting about her stove. She said: “When they come Thursday, they open up the whole stove I just buy—take it apart and ransack the whole place. “The tailor next door, they throw way all the man cloth,” she says.
A stout woman, holding one of the five-plus toddlers playing within the group, adds: “We suffering. We have police breaking down door and taking up everybody, but in the middle of this when Kamla down the road last week shaking hands with certain people and giving keys for house, she didn’t know who she was shaking hands with,” she says.
En route out of Nelson/Gaza, a big group of men are clustered midway in one block: “Nah, nah, nobody here have anything to say, is only pipers here, pass through,” says one.
Nelson Street gets another shakedown
Published: Wed, 2011-09-14 21:02
Gail Alexander
The Nelson Street apartment building. Photo Kristian De Silva
The celebration didn’t last long.
Hours after 21 Nelson Street youths were freed on Monday regarding gang charges, police squads were back “visiting” east Port-of-Spain. And certain security forces had an especially loud special “message” for a female Nelson Street resident who has dared to air public complaints, according to members of the community who heard it live and direct on loudspeaker that night. “We ent get chance to breathe, the police was back here last night, a whole set a them. They come in the yard, they say they could re-arrest us again,” several of the freed youths said yesterday morning.
“They targeting us unfairly, for what I don’t know. We glad we outside but we not comfortable. We frighten for we life,” one freed youth, Atiba Gorkin, added. In the shade of the concrete “plannings”, several of the youths were enjoying the outdoors yesterday after three weeks at a high-risk Golden Grove facility.
They were among the first detained and charged by authorities at the start of the state of emergency. They said they had been liming near a school on Nelson Street waiting to undertake a paint job when police swooped down and began arrests.
Those detained included Gorkin’s cousin who had just served a year in prison and had been released the day before police pounced on the area. The cousin was among those charged with gang-related issues. On Monday, however, Chief Magistrate Marcia Ayers-Caesar freed the men, ages 18 to 63, after Director of Public Prosecutions Roger Gaspard said there was insufficient evidence to proceed. There was ample evidence of security agencies’ presence on Nelson Street yesterday morning .
A green military heliocpter flying low, flew east at medium speed across southern Nelson Street. A police SUV drove down the street past older residents who no longer bother to eye such vehicles. “Down there, Minister John Sandy grow up,” says a 60-ish man in an aqua T-shirt, pointing down southern Nelson Street.
Another in a brown, striped jersey and matching pants, sneezing heavily, says: “People feel justice with the court verdict Monday. They just taking up these fellas. Once they wearing a Clarks, a three-quarter pants and a vest, they feel you in a gang.” Higher into “plannings” territory, residents, old and young, male and female, start telling about the police “visit” to the area on Monday night, immediately after the men were freed by the court.
They are also very vocal about what they heard being broadcast on a loudspeaker from a police vehicle about a female resident. The young woman had been on television and was recently featured in T&T Guardian “Lockdown” speaking about alleged police threats and harassment.
She had said she was frightened. She had also called for social services for youths in the area.
Yesterday, several in various Nelson Street buildings were incredulous—and appalled—at the message about her which they said was sent by loudspeaker to the neighbourhood when the police squad passed through Monday night.
Persons from up and down the street who heard it, said the message named the woman and was brutally and colourfully explicit regarding allegations of assorted sexual acts and various body orifices. Yesterday, there was no sign of the woman in the building where she had been last week.
But in the courtyard where some of the freed youths were liming, none were hesitant to speak about the latest police “visit” they had encountered. “We barely settle down, they come back again Monday night, saying they could hold we again for 120 days without evidence. Everybody uneasy,” says a 24-year-old.
A woman, plaiting the hair of another, adds: “I live over there and when they come last night I just crack my door and see one set a them in the yard.” Gorkin says: “It looking like the police have a problem with us. I want the Government to tell us why because we are HDC tenants? Why try to pin this gang thing on us?” PNM Port-of-Spain South MP Marlene McDonald, contacted on the loudspeaker message about the young woman, said: “If true, we have to ask what kind of monsters this state of emergency is creating of our security forces? This kind of complaint is what we have to take to the special tribunal set up by the Chief Justice. “Is this now a police state? This reported behaviour cannot be tolerated. Every Monday monring we are losing our rights.”
Several of the youths who were imprisoned related the tale of their stay in the high risk facility, now being called “Guantanamo”. They said: “Three and four to a cell... cold food... peas like soup... like cat food. They wake you up 5 am and tell 20-30 men, go and bathe for five minutes. “That young fella, the Beetham footballer, he could barely hold up... he only crying... in all ah we is only about 20 Indian fellas they hold. “A partner who has a sore foot because of a kidney problem, never get any of the tablets he is take. He foot swell up big, big in there. “They say if we act up they will tell the officers we spit on them. You know what (will) happen after dat.”
Several said officers pressured them for information. “They say, ‘so all yuh ent giving we nothing?’ We ask what we have to give you? Human rights people need to come and see this as people losing confidence in the Police Service.” One youth, a port contract worker, said: “I mightn’t get back that work because I was alleged to be in a gang. I won’t be able to get little security work either.” He shakes his head.
Comedian and corporation worker “Knotts Landing” who has lived in the “plannings” most of his 54 years, was not exempt from police searches. He said: “They had dog all on my bed looking for what I don’t know. “They tell me put mih hands up and they pat me down too. They not doing this thing right.” A 59-year-old woman, with Rasta braids, adds: “Week before last an army man cuff my 18-year-old nephew in his ear. Now he can’t hear. Police tell him go the hospital and get a paper. “But where we going with that? Where the justice for we when they do these kind of things?” she asks.
“My brother in Belmont had a house-breaking. He ask the police who come to see him about taking evidence for forensic checking. You know they tell him ‘dat is for TV.’”
Habit7 wrote:The onus is on the police to gather credible evidence on the people they arrest and by extension the justice system to convict where there is credible evidence. Frustration over lack of convictions can breed a society that can convict innocent bystanders (not withstanding the Nelson St. 21). A couple months ago the nation cried out for 3 persons killed by the police even though they were in a stolen car with a known convict among them, but people still say police should lock up every young man with drooping pants and kill every suspected gun holder. It hasn't worked in Venezuela it would not work here. But a professional and respectable police force and an efficient justice system works in NY and LA and their crime was tremendously reduced from in the 90's
pugboy wrote:and sitting next to Bas in press conference
somebody needs to make a video showing both Bas liming with bandits
Greypatch wrote:Time to pass legislation (MR AG) to make CC Footage evidence that can be used in court.
Looking at that video makes me sick.
They are PARASITES..
Greypatch wrote:Time to pass legislation (MR AG) to make CC Footage evidence that can be used in court.
Looking at that video makes me sick.
They are PARASITES..
Xplode wrote:nismoid wrote:But wait!!! the fat man who robbin the driver, aint he the same one called "gorkin" who is being hailed as a hero now on nelson street? I could be wrong eh! but he looks like him to me
with the white jersey and plats.
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