News, Top Story

J’Ouvert Fiasco Enrages Many

Why Cops Crashed Party.

Image: Police quelling a fight near the Vendors’ Arcade early Monday morning in which a woman was stabbed in the chest. (PHOTO: Stan Bishop)
Police quelling a fight near the Vendors’ Arcade early Monday morning in which a woman was stabbed in the chest. (PHOTO: Stan Bishop)

THE seven j’ouvert bands that were forced, Monday morning, to end their jump up session prematurely because of a decision taken by police are still seething in anger.

Now the police have broken their silence on the matter saying that the course of action they took was as a result of information reaching them at the time.

They also claimed that it was never their intention to stop Saint Lucians and visitors from enjoying themselves.

Police Press Officer, Zachary Hippolyte said: “Remember police officers have families who too were in a j’ouvert band. So it never was the intention of the police to end j’ouvert proceedings. On that morning there were sporadic incidents of fighting and one or two incidents of stabbing.

“Now I know people are asking why didn’t the police handle those guys (trouble makers). The thing is, and I cannot divulge the information in its entirety, but a decision was taken by an officer in charge of the event. Upon receiving certain information the officer passed on that information to the Commissioner of Police and through their deliberations on the information received the Commissioner of Police gave the order that j’ouvert should be stopped”

“It is not about the fighting. What people need to understand is that after the fighting things could happen,” Hippolyte added.

Eye witnesses recorded incidents of fighting in at least one j’ouvert band and the stabbing of a woman near government buildings on the waterfront. That woman collapsed minutes later on Jeremie Street next to the government printery.

Most of the bands however did not register incidents of fighting or other violent acts and were furious that their jump session through the streets of Castries Monday morning was cut short.

Law abiding Saint Lucians who came out to unwind and have a good time in a J’ouvert band were furious at the premature end of the event.

Foreigners who came to Saint Lucia just for the carnival and were members of some of the bands were also angry that their time on the road was cut short before some of them even broke a sweat.

One band, Mudsters, said that 60 percent of its revellers were foreigners.

In fact it has been said that this year saw the biggest influx of foreigners in carnival. Band leaders are saying that the police were unprepared for the skirmishes that took place at J’ouvert and could have dealt with the matter in ways other than shutting the event down.

“Everybody got short-changed,” a band leader said.

Reports are that the early closure of the event resulted in some bands not being judged.

Micah George is an established name in the journalism landscape in St. Lucia. He started his journalism tutelage under the critical eye of the Star Newspaper Publisher and well known journalist, Rick Wayne, as a freelancer. A few months later he moved to the Voice Newspaper under the guidance of the paper’s recognized editor, Guy Ellis in 1988.

Since then he has remained with the Voice Newspaper, progressing from a cub reporter covering court cases and the police to a senior journalist with a focus on parliamentary issues, government and politics. Read full bio...

5 Comments

  1. This is what happens when you have imbeciles running the country. There was a man who had everything he touched, turned to Gold, but with Allen Chastanet not even the Tourist industry is safe from being turned to stone and ashes.

    1. You are such a tool. What does the government have to do with j’ouvert? People were planning to retaliate for supposed injustices that happened on the road and you’re blaming the government? Are you a special kind of stupid? Or are you such a political savant that no matter what, it’s the government’s fault?
      Dude, chill… stop taking politics so seriously, and look at what is happening for just what it is. Our people misbehaving because they can.

    2. *

      Something is seriously malfunctioning in the cerebral area of the people who think that this retarded imbecile Allen Chastanet can bring any kind of his “bavaaa” rhetoric to fruition.

      The waders can consider themselves quite fortunate that this Criminal administration inundated with rapist, thieves and murderers did not order that they be put to death, nor will the Chastanet Crime Family show the least hesitation to murder them and plant weapons on the victims, as was done five years ago under the same UWP Government of Stephenson King, and the Crime family instructing the Police, the same Police Force, led by Pinochet Vernon Francois, to TAKE THEM OUT!

  2. SOM:
    It’s as if, you having a very difficult time reading and understanding what you read. You are such a NINCOMPOOP…

  3. /

    I am aware that the worship of this naked white man by these marooned African Slaves, have not produced the sharpest minds after four-hundred years of praying to dead Caucasians as their Gods and Masters.

    Where else in the world will a person find a colony of Black Africans being ruled by Tarzan, Jane Dubulay, and Boy Allen in 2016 ?

    So I am not astonished that the Mental Amputees of white supremacy cannot make the connection between the police actions to suppress the festivities of the naked savages who drink blood and eat the bodies of dead Caucasians, stripped naked and having sexual intercourse in the public streets in front of the House of wax/church on Micoud Street, with all the socially maladjusted Priest looking on salivating at the immaculate conception and anatomy of the African beauty and her rhythms from the Presbytery to satisfy their porn fantacies and appetites for violent mastubation with metal implements, nails, sledge hammers, Cricket bats, and a portion of ‘Zortee’ plants.

    SUNNI PATTERSON

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhDF8WkSeTs

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