Thankfully no one was injured on Dean Street on Thursday night when police broke up a carnival practice. And while there was no injury, carnival spirits were seriously dampened by the police intrusion. Black Pearl has been based at the home of Dorla Vaughan on Dean Street for nearly two decades. On Thursday night, she blocked off the street to put her band members, all little girls, through one last practice before Saturday's carnival.
Things were going well until she says she was interrupted by the police who came to shut off her music and terminate the practice. An enraged Dorla Vaughan came to Channel 7 that same night to tell us that it was rude and uncalled for.
Dorla Vaughn, Black Pearl Carnival Band
"He told me if I don't out my radio, they will take me with them and they will take my radio. I told them they won't take this because they didn't buy this and they can't take me because I am not doing anything that is wrong. I didn't commit a crime so you can't take me. All of this was happening in my downstairs. He stretched over me and pulled my plug out of my outlet because I must out my radio and I am telling him to give me my plug and he is fighting with me for my own radio plug. Then he looked on my daughter and told my daughter to talk to me or he would do me something. He had my radio plug in his hand. Before we left from my place, this plug that I have in my hand here, is the plug he pulled out because I plug this into my DVD, I plug it in my radio to play my CD and he took this out of my radio and took it with him to police station."
Jules Vasquez,
So he really put a damper on your spirit?
Dorla Vaughn,
"You understand. The children would have already practiced and gone home and we would have taken our radio back upstairs and get back into our working spirit to do our final touch with anything that we had to do."
Dorla, who is a Justice of the Peace, had to go to the police station to get back her cables and says she will file a complaint with the Internal Affairs Department.
