Joel Julien

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

“I am bipo­lar. I am sor­ry.”

This was the apol­o­gy of­fered yes­ter­day by Ian Smart for pulling a cap off a po­lice­man’s head dur­ing the Black Lives Move­ment protest in Trinidad and To­ba­go at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah on Mon­day.

Smart is the son of for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al An­tho­ny Smart, the cur­rent chair­man of state-owned bank First Cit­i­zens, and is the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Smart En­er­gy Lim­it­ed and head of the non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion We Green Army.

Mon­day’s most­ly peace­ful protest was marred by the in­ci­dent in­volv­ing Smart that took place af­ter pro­test­ers con­front­ed a po­lice of­fi­cer who was video­tap­ing the demon­stra­tion, say­ing he could not film the pro­ceed­ings with­out their per­mis­sion.

While the po­lice­man faced off with a fe­male pro­test­er, Smart grabbed the of­fi­cer’s cap off of his head and raised his mid­dle fin­gers at him be­fore run­ning away.

The sit­u­a­tion was even­tu­al­ly dif­fused by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith who was present at the time.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Smart yes­ter­day to find out what sparked the con­fronta­tion.

“That po­lice of­fi­cer was film­ing us with­out our con­sent. He was very in­tru­sive, he could have come there in plain clothes with a cell­phone cam­era and filmed and it would not have been seen as ob­tru­sive,” Smart said.

“But he came there in his po­lice uni­form with a big stink­ing cam­era, barged in­to the crowd, in­to the cen­tre re­al­ly be­ing in­tru­sive. So I didn’t want to be filmed for what­ev­er rea­son, next thing they use that film against me and this thing is that they are gath­er­ing in­tel­li­gence.

“So we asked him to stop film­ing, he didn’t want to stop film­ing so I said if you want to take footage of my body with­out my per­mis­sion then I am go­ing to take your hat with­out your per­mis­sion and that’s what I did. It was a tit for tat.”

Smart said he felt his ac­tions, in turn, sparked a con­ver­sa­tion that need­ed to hap­pen.

“That sparked a tremen­dous amount of so­cial me­dia con­ver­sa­tion across Trinidad and the di­as­po­ra about what is the de­f­i­n­i­tion of free­dom of pri­va­cy, and who can be filmed, and when and where,” he said.

Smart was pre­vi­ous­ly in­volved in a one-man protest against Rit­u­als Cof­fee House three years ago.

He said both ac­tions stemmed from his ill­ness.

“I want to come out of the clos­et to the pub­lic about my ill­ness and ex­plain that race things tend to trig­ger my ill­ness,” Smart said.

“The events that are tak­ing place in Trinidad are stress­ing me out and it starts the be­gin­ning phase of the ill­ness.”

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, ac­tivist Muham­mad Muwak­il, who was one of the or­gan­is­ers of the demon­stra­tion, con­demned Smart’s ac­tions. Muwak­il said while he be­came an­gered by the po­lice­man’s at­tempt to film the pro­test­ers against their will, he would not have re­sort­ed to vi­o­lence of any type.

“We had no in­ten­tion of ap­proach­ing the po­lice and be­com­ing vi­o­lent. So I con­demn his (Smart’s) ac­tions out­right,” Muwak­il said.

“There are some peo­ple who are self­ish and take their own sat­is­fac­tion over the right­ful agen­das of the peo­ple who have gath­ered. The agen­da was nev­er to pro­voke the po­lice.”

Muwak­il al­so ex­pressed his dis­ap­point­ment that Mon­day’s demon­stra­tion had be­come over­shad­owed by the brief con­fronta­tion.

Mean­while, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said yes­ter­day that he was will­ing to give Smart an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­plain him­self af­ter be­ing told that Smart had told Guardian Me­dia he was suf­fer­ing from a men­tal ill­ness and want­ed to apol­o­gise.

“We were go­ing to find him but we look for­ward to see­ing him to­mor­row (to­day),” Grif­fith told Guardian Me­dia in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

He said Smart can present him­self to any po­lice sta­tion to give his side of the sto­ry.

How­ev­er, Grif­fith said Smart’s ac­tions could have had se­ri­ous con­se­quences.

“His ac­tions were very fool­ish, they could have caused many reper­cus­sions. His par­ents should have re­con­sid­ered his Chris­t­ian name and in­stead of call­ing him Ian they should have called him Not Very and kept the same sur­name,” Grif­fith said.

Ear­li­er in the day dur­ing the week­ly po­lice press brief­ing, Grif­fith al­so ad­dressed the is­sue.

“We are meet­ing with that in­di­vid­ual, we are go­ing to have a nice con­ver­sa­tion with him, it does not mean, every sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent, it does not mean as soon as we find this in­di­vid­ual he will be ar­rest­ed but we are look­ing for­ward to hav­ing a nice con­ver­sa­tion with him,” he said.

Grif­fith said while the TTPS is flex­i­ble, it will not con­done any such ac­tions in the fu­ture.

“Emp­ty ves­sels make the most noise. Some of those scream­ing and shout­ing, they re­al­ly were on­ly there for con­fronta­tion and it will to­tal­ly di­min­ish the val­ue of what they are there for but we are not tak­ing that bait,” Grif­fith said.

He said the TTPS had grant­ed per­mis­sion for up to five peo­ple to take part in Mon­day’s protest but the num­bers even­tu­al­ly climbed sig­nif­i­cant­ly and the sit­u­a­tion be­came tense.