Sev­er­al mem­bers of the Sil­ver Stars steel or­ches­tra were ar­rest­ed ear­ly this morn­ing fol­low­ing an al­leged con­fronta­tion with po­lice of­fi­cers dur­ing Tribe’s band launch cel­e­bra­tions.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the in­ci­dent oc­curred around 2 am in the North Stand area of the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, where the steel­band had been hired to close the event.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, plain-clothes of­fi­cers ap­proached the pan side and in­struct­ed them to stop play­ing. The sit­u­a­tion al­leged­ly es­ca­lat­ed when one of­fi­cer grabbed a drum­mer’s sticks and knocked over in­stru­ments, trig­ger­ing a scuf­fle be­tween po­lice and band mem­bers.

The al­ter­ca­tion re­port­ed­ly un­fold­ed near the VIP sec­tion, which had ear­li­er host­ed sev­er­al gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Anil Roberts and Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Far­ley Au­gus­tine. It is un­der­stood the of­fi­cials had al­ready left the venue at the time of the in­ci­dent.

Videos cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia ap­pear to show a chaot­ic scene, with steel­pans and stands scat­tered across the North Stand and sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als on the ground dur­ing the con­fronta­tion.

An un­known num­ber of Sil­ver Stars mem­bers were de­tained fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, while one per­son was tak­en to hos­pi­tal for treat­ment.

Up to press time, nei­ther the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) nor Tribe had is­sued a state­ment on the mat­ter.

The cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the con­fronta­tion re­main un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.