SAN­DRA L BLOOD

blood­san­dral@ya­hoo.com

The names Quin­cy Tay­lor, age 29 years, and Justin Eligon, 27, may have been known in their liv­ing com­mu­ni­ty as good, bad or in­dif­fer­ent youths, but at some point in our grow­ing, we all were a bit of each, and ei­ther mere­ly grew and ma­tured or grew and ma­tured “well.” While grow­ing/ma­tur­ing, the fa­mous ques­tion posed to many chil­dren is: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and most times, we are clue­less or state a ca­reer that we on­ly know of su­per­fi­cial­ly. Tru­ly fun­ny, though, very few of us evolve in­to what we re­al­ly want­ed to be.

Suf­fice it to say, Tay­lor and Eligon got their dream job, but al­so want­ed to be stars with a dif­fer­ent lu­mi­nes­cence. Af­ter weigh­ing the pros and the cons, pri­ori­tis­ing, and mak­ing hard de­ci­sions, they even­tu­al­ly evolved in­to wear­ing a star in­stead be­com­ing po­lice of­fi­cers #18479 Q Tay­lor and #20056 J Eligon, with­in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, cur­rent­ly at­tached to the spe­cial unit In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF) and as­signed to Team A of the Op­er­a­tions Hope pro­gramme.

Sev­en­teen years com­bined ser­vice, and charged with the key re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to “deal with crime in ar­eas which are deemed ‘hot spots’ for crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties,” which in­cludes, in part, as­sist­ing res­i­dents with­in such neigh­bour­hoods or­gan­ise pro­duc­tive so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties, to strike a bal­ance, oth­er tal­ents must emerge.

It was dur­ing a re­cent video doc­u­ment­ed by Supt (Ag) Roger D Alexan­der, of lo­cal tele­vi­sion, prime-time talk show fame, where Tay­lor and Eligon re­vealed to the world their abil­i­ty to, and long-stand­ing love for singing, in re­sponse to ques­tions field­ed by Alexan­der in tap­ping in­to their in­spi­ra­tion and help­ing pro­mote their tune, The Vac­cine.

The Vac­cine, which can be found on YouTube, “aims to help stop the blame game, en­cour­age pos­i­tiv­i­ty, self-aware­ness and per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty” dur­ing these try­ing times.

In ob­serv­ing the pro­lif­er­a­tion of breached COVID-19 safe­ty ad­vi­sories, while on the beat in east Port-of-Spain in April, Tay­lor felt com­pelled to re­vamp his reg­gae-flavoured 2017-com­posed tune, tweak it mak­ing it rel­e­vant to to­day, and help peo­ple cor­rect them­selves from an an­gle oth­er than is­su­ing cau­tions and ar­rests.

A per­form­ing artiste since school era and at the ca­lyp­so tent (Ca­lyp­so Re­vue) son of vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian and for­mer Young King and Ca­lyp­so Monarch, Pink Pan­ther (Er­ic Tay­lor), youth Tay­lor takes fash­ion from dad by adding colour to his so­bri­quet be­ing Blue Pan­ther, while Eligon, “Jus El,” who is al­so a per­form­ing artiste, boasts of al­ways singing in the dorm when one day, Blue Pan­ther was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised by his tal­ent, and en­cour­aged him to part­ner with him to bring The Vac­cine to life.

Touch­ing hearts

and minds

Un­daunt­ed by a pop­u­lar ra­dio sta­tion’s dis­in­ter­est in the tune though rel­e­vant to­day, claim­ing “it’s not good at this time; they are fo­cus­ing on ‘zess­ing and hiphop’,” in same way the of­fi­cers en­force laws, they vouch to con­tin­ue en­forc­ing pos­i­tiv­i­ty in the hearts and minds of all.

“We want the song to leave a good im­pres­sion in hearts and on minds of all na­tion­als and in­ter­na­tion­als; to do some in­tro­spec­tion be­cause at the end of the day, we are all in this to­geth­er…. We are to check our self; ex­am­ine our self; look in the mir­ror and see what we can do dif­fer­ent­ly… to make this place we call sweet T&T a place we once knew as the ‘good old days’,” as­serts Tay­lor.

Eligon states, “We could nev­er com­plete the jour­ney to solve any crime; solve is­sues/prob­lems, well, if we con­tin­ue to point fin­gers at each oth­er. We have to look at how we do things and stop try­ing to go against what we (po­lice) are try­ing to put in place.

“There are still many peo­ple who de­lib­er­ate­ly flout the safe­ty or­ders, hide and still have limes…do­ing all the wrong things.”

Tay­lor and Eligon wish to thank their boss, Snr Supt Sub­rero, for his un­der­stand­ing, con­tin­ued guid­ance and ad­vice; In­sp Mar­cus for the in­spi­ra­tion to re­lease the song, their IATF col­leagues for their un­wa­ver­ing sup­port, and, leav­ing the best for last, Supt (Ag) Alexan­der, for the tele­vi­sion in­ter­view and help­ing pro­mote the song.

While some of­fi­cers dance or play sport, some sing.