“If we shoot be­hind the po­lice, they will get vex right? So, if they shoot us, we must just take it?”

This was a com­ment from one Nel­son Street res­i­dent yes­ter­day, as they stood in sol­i­dar­i­ty with those in Beetham and Sea Lots who were protest­ing, say­ing the is­sue of po­lice-in­volved killings spans ter­ri­to­ry and ge­og­ra­phy.

Short­ly af­ter the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way was blocked, res­i­dents of Nel­son Street took mat­ters in­to their own hands and dis­rupt­ed traf­fic near the cor­ner of Queen Janelle Com­mis­siong Street. They lit de­bris on fire and hurled large stones on­to the road­way.

“We want the po­lice to get charge, we want po­lice to start get­ting charge for them thing be­cause that is peo­ple chil­dren, we can’t trust them,” an­oth­er res­i­dent said.

It didn’t take long for mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to re­spond to the protest, quick­ly re­mov­ing the de­bris and stay­ing for a short while to keep the peace. How­ev­er, min­utes af­ter they left, the block­ade re­sumed, this time with more fer­vour.

Mem­bers of the me­dia were warned by the pro­tes­tors not to record their ac­tiv­i­ties and mis­siles were even hurled at some jour­nal­ists to de­sist from record­ing the ac­tiv­i­ty.

Lat­er, res­i­dents said they mis­took Guardian Me­dia for po­lice of­fi­cers and apol­o­gised af­ter one mem­ber of the me­dia was struck.

But this time when the po­lice re­turned, they were not as pas­sive as be­fore. A con­tin­gent of of­fi­cers went straight up to a group of young men, and ad­dress­ing one man in par­tic­u­lar, they warned that this be­hav­iour would not be tol­er­at­ed.

“Broth­er man,” a se­nior of­fi­cer shout­ed at the man while seem­ing to put on his body cam­era, “I am telling you we are not en­cour­ag­ing no block roads, de­sist from that, that is against the law, I am speak­ing to you.”

Even then, some res­i­dents who were at a safe dis­tance from the of­fi­cers shout­ed, “Stop the po­lice killings!”

The of­fi­cers again cleared the roads and this time po­si­tioned them­selves not on­ly on Nel­son Street but near­by Dun­can Street.

A group of young men told Guardian Me­dia af­ter­wards that they be­lieve their ac­tions yes­ter­day were jus­ti­fied.

“Is a long while now the po­lice killing the youths,” one man said.

He then ad­dressed Sat­ur­day’s in­ci­dent in which three men were killed along In­de­pen­dence Square in a po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing, “They didn’t have any guns in the car, they could nev­er find no Smith and Wes­son gun on them. Them fel­las from up by me, they have no case, noth­ing, they en­joy­ing life, they go­ing a par­ty, what hap­pens is they didn’t have any li­cense (dri­ver’s per­mit), so the po­lice could have dri­ven in front their car and stop it with­out shoot­ing.”

When Guardian Me­dia was leav­ing, an el­der­ly man said, “I not blam­ing them.”

Mo­tion­ing to the youths, he added, “They have their press con­fer­ences, we have the streets.