Category Archives: Crime in T&T

PM wants to dance crime away

Patrick Manning To dance or not to dance?
By Ariti Jankie, April 28th 2007
The idea of “dancing crime away” has been welcomed by dance tutors, but has drawn condemnation from some religious educators.

Manning has said that Government planned to use the dance and music option, not hip hop, to draw young people away from criminal activities and expose them to a more wholesome lifestyle.

PM dances crime away
By Richardson Dhalai, April 27 2007
Prime Minister Patrick Manning plans to use dance and music, but not hip hop, to help young people stay away from “unsavoury lifestyles.”

Govt Brass band coming
By Ria Taitt Saturday, April 14 2007
Despite already having a functional, well established and highly-rated Youth National Orchestra, Government has decided to establish a large brass band comprising young musicians.

The advertisement states that applications must be submitted to the Permanent Secretary to the Prime Minister, Office of the Prime Minister, Whitehall, by April 17.

The advertisement stated that vacancies exist in the various sections, including saxophone, trumpet, trombone; rhythm and percussion sections, and for male and female vocalists.

Machel Montano in Brawl at Zen Over Spilled Drink

www.trinidadandtobagonews.com/blog

TrinidadandTobagoNews.com
April 26, 2007

In the aftermath of the Akon and Danah scandal at Club Zen, new reports have surfaced of another controversy/incident at the club in which Soca giants Machel Montano, Kernel Roberts and Benjai have been questioned by police. According to reports, twenty-five year old Russell Pollonais of Princess Town was the victim of a physical attack involving Machel Montano and members of his entourage around 2:30 this morning. According to a female relative of Pollonais, he and a group of friends, some visiting from England, went to the Zen Night Club on Wednesday night to celebrate an upcoming wedding when the incident occured.
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Machel Montano in Brawl at Zen

Machel at Club Zen last night
Machel Montano and Mr. Howard Chin Lee at Club Zen last night

Trinidad and Tobago News
April 26, 2007

Is it a twist of fate or could it be ‘jumbie’ at Zen? Zen is once more in the news with another controversy; this time, it involves local superstar, Machel Montano who is known for his energetic performances. This incident took place following a function Machel Montano held at club Zen to thank various parties for the success of his Carnival and Madison Square Garden concerts.
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Amy’s Mom Freed

By Newsday Reporter
Tuesday, April 17 2007

Trinidad and Tobago News Blog
www.trinidadandtobagonews.com/blog

JailANITA ANAMUNTHODO, mother of Amy Emily Anamunthodo, the four-year-old girl who was raped and beaten to death last year, was yesterday freed on six charges of wilful neglect and child abandonment. Deputy Chief Magistrate Mark Wellington, presiding in the San Fernando First Magistrate’s Court, freed the mother due to the non-appearance of police complainant PC Hamilton (since August 2006) and other prosecution witnesses.

Wellington yesterday discharged Anamunthodo, 19, of Marabella, who had been in custody since she was charged in May last year. She was granted bail but no one went forward to stand the bail of $7,500.
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Basdeo Panday’s conviction has been squashed

Basdeo PandayFormer Prime Minister Basdeo Panday’s conviction and sentence have been squashed. The Court of Appeal this afternoon ordered a new trial at the Magistrate’s Court before a different Magistrate. Mr. Panday was sentenced to two years in jail and fined by Chief Magistrate Sherman McNicolls after being found guilty of not declaring a Million Dollar London bank account to the Integrity Commission.
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Crime will not stop the Carnival

By Raffique Shah
February 18, 2007

CarnivalIt’s the columnist’s perennial dilemma: what topic to address on a Carnival Sunday? Who reads newspapers around this time anyway? Pan “peongs” in their thousands will be bleary-eyed and either celebrating the sound of steel or fuming over the judges’ decisions from last night’s Panorama finals. Many more who will have attended Friday night’s cacophony, “Soca Monarch”, rendered tone-deaf by noise boxes supreme, are too dazed to do anything but seek out more noise. And the few who have remained sober until now will be psychologically adjusting their systems for the stupor that will start by nightfall.
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The Valley of Hopelessness

By Stephen Kangal
February 19, 2007

Red HouseThe national community must show its outrage on the post -Cabinet uttering made by Minister Valley on the crime situation and widely reported in the media on Thursday 24 January. After the Manning Administration has led many citizens without any protection into the valley of the shadow of untimely and premature death and rampant crime that also potentially threatens each one of us, Minister Valley repeats the insensitivity of his Prime Minister and proceeds to justify our spiraling crime pandemic as being part of a “global event”. It has nothing to do, according to him, with the total failure of his Government to guarantee our life, liberty, the security of the person and our hard-earned property. For him crime, like inflation, is a feature of the global village of which T&T is a part. It is externally determined.
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Doing the ‘danse macabre’

By Raffique Shah
February 04, 2007

JailLast Thursday night, in districts as diverse as Carenage and Laventille, Morne Diablo and Enterprise, the criminal communities (oh, yes: those fellas have “communities”!) fired assorted gunshots saluting Police Commissioner Trevor Paul. Paul, along with Brigadiers Peter Joseph and Edmund Dillon, had earlier appeared on television promising to “run the criminals to the ground” over the carnival season. For the millionth time a CoP threatened “zero tolerance”, vowing to lock up jaywalkers and gay-walkers and maybe a few pickpockets and drunkards and pamphleteers. Little wonder the real criminals, the gunmen who are our new rulers, who call the shots very literally, were celebrating.
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Grandparents bludgeoned to death

By Nalinee Seelal, newsday.co.tt
January 31 2007

JailAn elderly couple was beaten to death at their Cascade home yesterday by bandits who escaped with an iron safe, leaving behind two infant children crawling in the blood of their murdered grandparents.

The badly beaten body of retired Neal and Massy auto manager, Clyde Commissiong, 69, and his 70-year-old wife, Denise, were found covered in blood in two separate areas of their home on Riverside Road, Cascade. The discovery was made by their daughter Simone, around midday yesterday.
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We are failing the promises of Independence

By Errol F. Hosein
January 27, 2007

Trini PeopleThe recent slaughter of four individuals in Morvant including a police officer and the horrific exposure to the atrocity by a young child, is a startling reminder that few are safe from harms way in our present-day society.

We are rapidly becoming a dysfunctional society in which crime and criminals command respect. Too frequently we make comparative analysis about crime and criminal activity in other countries around the world as if to minimize the pain and suffering that we are presently experiencing. This is simply morbid.
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