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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Police pick-up in ‘ganja’ music video

It’s a fake—producer

by

2624 days ago
20180510

The rough time the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing got even worse yes­ter­day, af­ter a marked po­lice ve­hi­cle in a mu­sic video glam­or­is­ing the use of weed sur­faced on­line.
The mu­sic video, ti­tled “Bun­nin It”, was re­leased on Youtube.com on Tues­day and up to press time last evening had close to 4,000 view­ers. It is just about three min­utes long and fea­tures a lo­cal artiste from Ari­ma known as The Writer & Rid­dim Roy­als. 
In the video’s first 40 sec­onds, a marked po­lice four-door pick up is parked in a bushy area ad­ja­cent to a co­conut field and the artiste is sit­ting on its bon­net smok­ing what ap­pears to be a mar­i­jua­na joint. 
It starts up: “When I on the beach ah bun­nin it…in the mid­dle of the street ah bun­nin…in front of the po­lice I bun­nin it.”
How­ev­er, in the video’s in­tro­duc­tion, the artistes made it known that they were ad­vised not to use the open­ing footage. It read: “The la­bel ad­vised us to ex­clude the open­ing footage…F@#- the La­bel…F@#- the po­lice too.”
The artiste then con­tin­ued: “Un­der the co­conut tree ah bun­nin it…When I done eat ah bun­nin it…High Grade in meh back­pack…when I open meh lap­top high grade cen­tres the back drop.”
The video quick­ly reached of­fi­cials at the TTPS and in­struc­tions were giv­en to of­fi­cers at the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) to launch an im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the au­then­tic­i­ty of the po­lice ve­hi­cle, the lo­ca­tion where that part of the video was shot and who were the of­fi­cers who sanc­tioned the pro­mo­tion of the TTPS’ ve­hi­cle in the mu­sic video.
The T&T Guardian con­tact­ed a spokesper­son at the mu­sic plat­form re­spon­si­ble for the video, Mum­ra Mu­sic, on the is­sue yes­ter­day and was told the TTPS “had noth­ing to wor­ry about” as it was not one of their of­fi­cial ve­hi­cles used in the video. Speak­ing from Wash­ing­ton DC, the spokesper­son, who wished to re­main anony­mous, said the video’s pro­duc­er was Ger­man-based and added that de­cals (a de­sign pre­pared on spe­cial pa­per for durable trans­fer on to an­oth­er sur­face) were used on the ve­hi­cle seen in the video.
“The ac­tu­al ve­hi­cle, if they (re­fer­ring to the po­lice), look at it prop­er­ly, it is not a make that the po­lice ser­vice use. Sec­ond­ly, that par­tic­u­lar shot did not hap­pen in Trinidad and then, it is ac­tu­al­ly de­cals that were used tem­porar­i­ly on­to the ve­hi­cle. It is not a po­lice ve­hi­cle num­ber,” the Mum­ra Mu­sic spokesper­son said.
Asked where was the lo­ca­tion for that as­pect of the video he de­clined to an­swer but in­sist­ed that it was done “on an­oth­er is­land.” Asked how many coun­tries were used in shoot­ing the video, he said: “I pre­fer not to say, but yes some of the shots, ex­am­ple the scene by the wa­ter (re­fer­ring to the coast­line shot), was done in Trinidad.”

How­ev­er, he al­so de­clined to dis­close the lo­cal ar­eas where the shoot­ing of the video oc­curred.
Asked if any gan­ja smok­ing was pro­mot­ed in the mu­sic video, the spokesper­son said: “No il­le­gal sub­stance was used in the mak­ing of the video. It was all act­ing.
“A lot of mon­ey was put in­to this pro­duc­tion and its in­ten­tion was to make it as much lo­cal as pos­si­ble (mean­ing T&T).”

Seales: All-time low for TTPS

A po­lice source said yes­ter­day that the artiste, along with all re­spon­si­ble in the mak­ing and pro­mo­tion of the video, will be “called in for ques­tion­ing.”
This is the third in­ci­dent in which the ac­tion of po­lice of­fi­cers can bring the ser­vice in­to dis­re­pute.

Last Wednes­day, two po­lice of­fi­cers were in­volved in a gun­fight with each oth­er at Grand Bazaar, Val­sayn. One of them, Sgt Dar­ryl Hon­ore, has since died. The oth­er in­ci­dent came two days lat­er, when pho­tos of a Lati­no woman scant­i­ly dressed wear­ing a se­nior of­fi­cer’s jack­et, with the name tag of ASP Michael Sook­er, sur­faced on­line. Sook­er has since been sus­pend­ed pend­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.
Con­tact­ed on this lat­est case yes­ter­day, TTPS’ So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Michael Seales de­scribed it as an “all-time low” for the TTPS “when events are dis­cov­ered.”
“The pro­duc­er achieved his ob­jec­tive. His video has gone vi­ral. But this is un­for­tu­nate­ly at the ex­pense of the TTPS. The video is pro­mot­ing the very thing that the TTPS ar­rest per­sons for. Drugs are il­le­gal,” Seales said. 
“But to use a TTPS ve­hi­cle in a video such as this and in this man­ner is an in­sult to high­est of any law en­force­ment or­gan­i­sa­tion. One won­ders if there was au­tho­ri­sa­tion for the use of the ve­hi­cle de­pict­ed in this man­ner or was it an il­le­gal use of the ve­hi­cle?”

Seales said the TTPS had now hit rock bot­tom.

“The as­so­ci­a­tion is hor­ri­fied. It looks like no turn­ing back now, as any hope of sal­vaging our im­age is lost in the eyes of the pub­lic.”
He added that the as­so­ci­a­tion is ea­ger to see how this lat­est fi­as­co will be han­dled.

“It looks like it’s a nev­er-end­ing tu­mul­tuous plum­met in­to the abyss of hope­less­ness based on these is­sues.”


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