90 minutes after we met the commissioner in the area - he and his minister Kareem Musa held a press briefing. Minister Musa says he was impressed at the police restraint, while the commissioner says that perhaps they showed too much restraint in that volatile moment:
Hon. Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs and New Growth Industries
"When I saw the amateur video Jules, I was impressed by the level of restraint that was exercised by the officers in that amateur video. Let us not forget that we are living in an age where every single thing that we do including our police officers will be filmed, will be videoed and so every step of the way we saw how our officers came under heavy attack like you said, projectiles being stoned at them and yet they exercised remarkable control and restraint and for that I commend them. In situations Jules where that happens, I can tell you if you are coming under attack by the law, the police officers as with any other citizen can defend themselves and so the individuals who were attacking the police last night are very lucky that the police did not react in a justified manner."
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"While yes, it is the plan of the government to be more, to have a softer approach to addressing crimes or for the police in a whole. It is not to say that the police officers must appear to be impotent or sterile. The police officers must still manifest the ability to be able to take a grip of the crime situation as they manifest themselves and so I have directed my officers this morning that we need to go back to the criminals and let them understand that while yes we are going to have a softer approach if it is that they want to continue to behave in such a way that they want to hold the people of the city hostage or to put fear in people then the police can't allow that to happen. They have to understand and we must give the citizens of this country the assurance that the police department is going to ensure that that handful of gang members do not hold the masses of us hostage in our homes or in this country. So, that is all I am going to say for now, the St. Martin's area do have a complement of officers now from our specialized units, they are in there operating and they have instruction to ensure that they do what needs to be done to arrest the situation. What happened last night was totally uncalled for on the part of those persons who resisted the police, who stoned at the police, who shot at the police all of this happened last night, they have to get the message. The police are the law enforcement
agents in this country and when we move in to deal with a situation, we expect that those persons against whom we are going, they must respect the law and be calm when the police come. When the riot shields came in the police got into the formation and they moved in very tactically and they dealt with the situation and even then, you could have heard people in the video still throwing words to say do them this or do them that so it shows the level of hostility that the police were confronting when they went into that particular area last night and despite that the police still went in, extracted who needed to be extracted, detained them and that was done without causing any injuries to anybody. Now if you ask me the question were the police too calm, I would say yes, they were too calm because sometimes people need to get the message."
20 persons were detained as a result of last night's ruckus.
