Po­lice of­fi­cers will be mon­i­tor­ing and pay­ing strict at­ten­tion to the mu­sic be­ing pro­duced by Trini­bad artistes. The as­sur­ance came from act­ing ACP Ve­na But­ler yes­ter­day, as she said of­fi­cers will con­tin­ue to charge those whose lyrics pro­mote gang vi­o­lence. Al­ready, two Trini­bad artistes have been charged with be­ing gang mem­bers.

Speak­ing at the TTPS’ me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, head of the po­lice’s Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion, act­ing ACP But­ler, said the of­fi­cers will be mon­i­tor­ing all mu­sic com­ing from artistes.  

Ear­li­er this month, Joseph “Medz Boss” Ol­livierre ap­peared be­fore Mas­ter Mar­garet Sookraj-Goswa­mi in the North High Court charged un­der the An­ti-Gang Act for be­ing a mem­ber of a gang. He was grant­ed $40,000 bail with sure­ty.  

His charges fol­lowed those against Kashif “Kman 6ixx” Sankar on Feb­ru­ary 6. Sankar was al­so grant­ed $40,000 bail with sure­ty when he ap­peared in court.

But­ler said the po­lice are us­ing all le­gal op­tions to han­dle crime and charg­ing artistes was a tes­ta­ment to that ef­fort. With­out nam­ing the artistes, the se­nior of­fi­cer said based on the mu­sic be­ing cre­at­ed lo­cal­ly, charges were laid. The po­lice, But­ler said, recog­nised that the mu­sic is be­ing used to in­flu­ence and prop­a­gate gang cul­ture and gang ac­tiv­i­ties.  

Asked if this meant that the po­lice would now form a unit aimed at specif­i­cal­ly mon­i­tor­ing Trini­bad artistes and their mu­sic, But­ler said: “I give you our com­mit­ment that we are mon­i­tor­ing that mu­sic. We are pay­ing at­ten­tion to what’s hap­pen­ing. And you will see the re­sults of that mon­i­tor­ing and our ac­tions.” 

The lyri­cal con­tent of Trini­bad mu­sic has al­so re­ceived at­ten­tion from of­fi­cials in this coun­try’s Caribbean neigh­bours. Last De­cem­ber, con­cerns grew over the vi­o­lence and sus­pect­ed af­fil­i­a­tion to the Sixx and Sev­en gangs which op­er­ate in this coun­try. This al­leged af­fil­i­a­tion caused Sankar to lose out on per­form­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties in St Kitts and Nevis and Grena­da, while po­lice in St Lu­cia took is­sue with his al­leged links to gang ac­tiv­i­ties.  

Last month, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly ad­vised par­ents to take a look at the Trini­bad con­tent their chil­dren con­sume. 

Last De­cem­ber, Dami­an Kriss, 26, his broth­er, Levi Kriss, 31, and Jer­ry Hollingsworth, 31, all part of Sankar’s en­tourage, were killed when gun­men opened fire on the car they were in on the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way.

Po­lice said Sankar was the killers’ tar­get. It was the sec­ond time Sankar had been the vic­tim of a gun at­tack that left those around him dead or in­jured.

Last Oc­to­ber, Kaveer “DJ Glob­al” Nan­dram was killed when gun­men went af­ter Sankar in Wood­brook. Be­tween Ju­ly 2020 and Au­gust 2022, Trini­bad artistes N’Kosi “Fari Dan” Bovell, Carl­ton “CJ Dan” Camp­bell, Daniel “Mad Dog” Hamil­ton, Keenan “Craig­man” Craig and Kyle “Rebel Sixx” George were all killed in what po­lice la­belled as gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders. 

Two oth­er Trini­bad artistes, Josi­ah “Siah Boss” Mc­Clatchie and Ja­heim “Chucky Blan­co” Joseph, were killed by the po­lice in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents in 2021.