The Wood­brook po­lice went out­side their law­ful ju­ris­dic­tion when they blocked Al­ber­to Street be­tween Siegert Square and Ari­api­ta Av­enue to fa­cil­i­tate a "street fes­ti­val."So said Deputy May­or of Port-of-Spain, Keron Valen­tine.The street fest which was held on Sat­ur­day an­gered sev­er­al Wood­brook res­i­dents, who com­plained about the loud mu­sic and the road be­ing blocked.The event, which was or­gan­ised by Lon­don-based pho­tog­ra­ph­er Sue­lan Al­li­son-Morze­jew­s­ki, was housed at Frankie's Restau­rant and Bar.

Ac­cord­ing to Valen­tine, most of the of­fi­cers who were as­signed to the event were at­tached to the Wood­brook Po­lice Sta­tion."The Wood­brook po­lice were not very co-op­er­a­tive at all. They were dis­re­spect­ful and that is some­thing that the may­or will be sched­ul­ing a meet­ing with the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er (Dwayne Gibbs) very ur­gent­ly to deal with these kind of mat­ters," Valen­tine said in an in­ter­view on Mon­day.Valen­tine, who had been in­struct­ed by Lee Sing to shut­down the event fol­low­ing res­i­dents' com­plaints, said he al­lowed it to con­tin­ue due to the pos­i­tive in­volve­ment of the youth in the ac­tiv­i­ties.

Par­tic­i­pants en­gaged in "un­der­ground" art­forms, such as white­board art, po­et­ry, skate­board­ing and BMX freestyling.Al­li­son-Morze­jew­s­ki said she paid $2,600 at the Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion on Fri­day for po­lice pres­ence at the event. She al­leged al­so that she re­ceived full clear­ance from Po­lice Head­quar­ters (ad­min­is­tra­tion) in Port-of-Spain to host the event.Re­spond­ing to the fall­out over the event, Al­li­son-Morze­jew­s­ki said it was nev­er her in­ten­tion to cause any trou­ble."We didn't set out to up­set any­one or step on any­one's toes. I am a for­eign­er and I didn't know what the pro­ce­dures were and we just went to get po­lice clear­ance so that they could be present at the time of the fes­ti­val," she said.

She sought to ex­on­er­ate pro­pri­etor of Frankie's Bar, Chris Hor­sham, say­ing the in­ci­dent was en­tire­ly her fault.Hor­sham fa­cil­i­tat­ed the arts event af­ter the venue was switched from the Mil­i­tary Mu­se­um as Al­li­son-Morze­jew­s­ki could not af­ford the $15,000 fee.She said while the po­lice in­formed her that the cor­po­ra­tion did not have the au­thor­i­ty to shut them down, she found her­self con­stant­ly try­ing to "dodge bul­lets" which came from all di­rec­tions, in­clud­ing some res­i­dents.