Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin says while he has had no cor­re­spon­dence on ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty or mon­i­tor­ing for the ar­rival of Ja­maican dance­hall star Vy­bz Kar­tel in T&T lat­er this month, he did agree with a draft or­der to lim­it the artiste’s pub­lic ap­pear­ances in the lead-up to the con­cert.

Late Wednes­day evening, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that Vy­bz Kar­tel—whose re­al name is Adid­ja Palmer—would be barred from a morn­ing in­ter­view, a mid­day TV ap­pear­ance, a press drop, a meet and greet, a school vis­it and a lunch with com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers.

Sturge said the draft or­der to lim­it the artiste’s en­gage­ments was made as there were con­cerns about him in­ter­act­ing with the na­tion’s youths, re­fer­ring to him be­ing freed of the 2011 mur­der of Clive Williams, on the ba­sis of a tech­ni­cal­i­ty and “not the mer­it of the case,” Sturge said.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ben­jamin said he agreed with the move in the in­ter­est of safe­ty. “We ful­ly agree with that and the rea­son for that is be­cause even as we look at peo­ple en­ter­ing the coun­try, we need to be very care­ful what we are pur­port­ing with­in the na­tion and I think the Min­is­ter had good grounds to make that de­ci­sion.”

The One Caribbean Me­dia con­cert will take place at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah on May 31.

Ben­jamin said while the po­lice were not con­tact­ed to pro­vide any ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty man­pow­er for the event, they were pre­pared to of­fer their sup­port for the safe­ty of all pa­trons, not­ing that they would be pay­ing close at­ten­tion to the event.

—Shane Su­perville

“We are look­ing at these con­certs and the per­sons and what those things can tell, es­pe­cial­ly with the crime sit­u­a­tion.

“The mu­sic, the per­sons and what they in­tend to do... so we will look at this par­tic­u­lar con­cert and will pro­vide the nec­es­sary man­pow­er to en­sure safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty.”