"I'm told that there are three sets of motives for knowing people: 1) to boast to others that one knows them, 2) to use them conveniently as an when needed, and 3) to gain something beyond mere personal or material advantage. I know that my true friends would come to me from that last set."
-- Captain Walker
Alleyne searched by police officers
By Vashtee Achibar Monday, September 5 2011
Crime Watch presenter Ian Alleyne was stopped and searched by police officers yesterday afternoon following a high-speed chase which began at Claxton Bay and ended near the Grand Bazaar intersection when his black SUV was finally intercepted.
Alleyne, another man and a former member of the Defence Force, said to be wanted in connection with several crimes, were ordered to lie on the ground and searched. The ex-soldier was taken into custody while Alleyne and his associate were allowed to leave.
The drama unfolded shortly after 2 pm on Saturday when a businessman, Dennis Ramdeen reported to St Margaret’s police that he was robbed of his vehicle and $800 in cash at Willow’s scrap Iron Yard in Claxton Bay by two gunmen.
A police exercise comprising Southern Division Police headed by Inspector Ramphal Gosine, members of the Crime Suppression Unit, Inter Agency Task Force and a platoon of soldiers under the command of second Lieutenant Wright from the La Romaine camp with aerial assistance from the Viper one and two helicopters went into action.
Acting on information the officers went to a house in the Forres Park district where they conducted a search and found an Italian Baretta sub-machine gun, five pieces of camouflage clothes and two gun belts.
During the search, the occupant of the house managed to run off, and was picked up by a black SUV. It was this SUV that was hotly pursued by police up the northbound lane of the Sir Solomon Hochoy Highway, and onto the Uriah Butler Highway where it was finally cornered by police.
The officers were shocked to see Crime Watch presenter, Ian Alleyne in the driver’s seat. Police searched the vehicle and Alleyne was allowed to leave.
The suspect from Claxton Bay was taken into custody. During the exercise which was spearheaded by Senior Supt Deodath Dulalchan and ASP Zamsheed Mohammed of the Southern Division, officers also seized a Winchester rifle.
Not to put a fine point on it, but this is why dunceys have Trinidad and Tobago consistently ranked as Third World.
The SUV was ‘hotly pursued’ up one highway onto another… those who know Trinidad will realise that is a distance of many miles… half the length of the island nearly. Hotly pursued indicates to me that the vehicle was travelling at a high speed (also supported by the words ‘high speed chase’) and ignoring calls (sirens, loudspeaker etc) for it to stop. It also indicates to me that road regulations were breached. Considering the involvement of aerial support, it would have cost a lot financially as well.
So why was the driver, Alleyne, allowed to go free? Why was he not charged for breach of road regulations, failure to stop/obey a police officer etc? Why was he not also charged with aiding a wanted felon in an escape attempt? Is it because he has a ‘crime watch’ show on national television and he would bring down ‘fire and brimstone’ on the head of these officers? Is it because he has Om Lalla as his lawyer?
I have no answers for these questions. If any good citizen out there knows, please enlighten us.
You’ll have to wait for it – about to be released soon (26th Sept)!! But you can catch up with some of Chickenfoot I in the mean time. Mystery? What happened to Chickenfoot II? See: www.chickenfoot.us – Chickenfoot just represents the greatest of the great in hard rock!
In response to one of the most moronic articles I read for a long, long time….
An article pandering to the emotive and popular ignoramuses...
For example, (and I will only make one small point):
In the second instance, a self-imposed curfew, by definition, is imposed by the self; it is voluntary. Those who choose to stay indoors at night choose to so do rather than having to do so for fear of arrest and detention.
The 'self-imposed' curfew isn't actually voluntary. It is self-imposed because the citizens are at GREAT risk of crimes while outside. Inside, some (the majority?) still have some protection from locked doors/windows and burglar proofing.
How many times have we heard of kidnappings/murders at the gate, even in early hours of the evening or sometimes daylight? This rises almost without end as the night falls.
How many murders/assaults/rapes inside the home, under guise of 'police!'?
This article merely panders to those who believe their 'rights' are abrogated. The same people who do not understand what a right is, and even worse, do not understand the responsibilities that come with those rights.
I wrote previously:
The typical Trinidadian/Tobagonian is a rubber-lipped, gum-bumping buffoon, clearly devoid of basic intelligence, and/or basic education; eager to venture opinion on matters in which s/he has little understanding, training or education. To make it worse, they demonstrate little evidence of critical thinking. And I say this with the utmost regard for the evidence they provided to justify this opinion.
Whether columnists or not, I see little reason to change my opinion.
Story Created: Sep 2, 2011 at 10:57 PM ECT
First there was Watergate. Now thirty-seven years later we have Surrogate, but given the amount of pain one particular incident is causing, call it Sorrowgate.
This is not an article for the squeamish or for those not versed in the ways of this brave new world in which we live. Watergate was about the theft or attempted theft of information. Since then we've had identity and other forms of robbery based on the manipulation of computer data as well as human credulity. Increasingly, the old adage about sparing the rod and spoiling the child gave way to artificial insemination, test tube babies and in vitro fertilisation. Along the way came ethical and other questions like, "If Michael Jackson was cloned, would it have been against the law for him to play with himself as a child?" There was even a reworking of the old nursery rhyme, "Mary Had A Little Lamb" the first two lines of which are:
Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was slightly grey,
It didn't have a father, just some borrowed DNA.
This "borrowing" of the stuff of life (or the gift that keeps on giving) created considerable concern and controversy a few years ago. In 2003, a family doctor, Richard Phillips, was slapped with a paternity suit — what we call in the Caribbean "maintenance" — by another physician, Dr Sharon Irons, an internist, with whom he admitted having a relationship. However, Phillips said that while they were together for a four-month period they never had intercourse but had oral sex three times. The relationship ended when Phillips learned Irons had lied to him about being recently divorced and was, in fact, still married to another doctor from whom Irons was subsequently divorced. Two years later, Irons filed the suit and despite his claim that they did not have a sexual relationship (except in the Clintonesque sense), Phillips had to pay US$800 a month maintenance because the DNA tests showed that the child was his.
According to the Associated Press (AP), Phillips then sued Irons, claiming her actions robbed him of sleep and caused him to have trouble eating. He contended that Irons, without his knowledge, kept some of his semen and used it to impregnate herself. He said he was haunted by "feelings of being trapped in a nightmare". Irons responded that her alleged actions weren't "truly extreme and outrageous" and that Phillips' pain wasn't bad enough to merit a lawsuit. The circuit court agreed and dismissed Phillips' suit in 2003. My Trinidadian friends had a good time punning on the female doctor's surname and, using the principle that one might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, believed that Phillips should have given her more of her last name.
Phillips appealed and took the case to the Appellate or higher Court accusing Irons of a "calculated, profound personal betrayal". This Court ruled that if Phillips' story was true, Irons "deceitfully engaged in sexual acts, which no reasonable person would expect could result in pregnancy, to use plaintiff's sperm in an unorthodox, unanticipated manner yielding extreme consequences". The Court agreed that Phillips could press a claim for emotional distress.
However, the Court agreed with the woman's lawyers that she did not steal the man's sperm as he claimed and dismissed fraud and theft claims against Irons. "She asserts that when plaintiff 'delivered' his sperm, it was a gift — an absolute and irrevocable transfer of title to property from a donor to a donee," the decision said. "There was no agreement that the original deposit would be returned upon request." A Trini friend of mine said tongue-in-cheek, "When Phillips heard the decision he blurted out ironically, 'Give me a break!'"
The Phillips case seems to have opened up a new frontier. A Wisconsin man says he has proof that aliens violated him and he has children in outer space. A Winnipeg man on trial for rape claims he was forced to have anal sex with his alleged victim against his will, accusing her of stealing his sperm so she could have a mixed-race baby. When asked by the Crown whether he thought pregnancy could result from anal sex, the man replied: "I'm not in the medical profession."
In Israel (story from the Israel News), the Haifa Family Court rejected a petition by a man to have a woman he accused of "sperm theft" terminate her pregnancy. The judge ruled that a pregnant woman's right over her body is absolute and that no one — not even an inadvertent father — has the right to prevent her from having a baby, should she choose to do so.
The ruling was made in the case of a 21-year-old man who asked the court to order a 26-year-old woman he accidentally got pregnant to terminate the pregnancy. He claimed that the woman, a divorcee with two children, "stole his sperm" by seducing him while he was under the influence of alcohol and further alleged that she assured him she was using birth control pills…Becoming a father at his young age, he pleaded, "would ruin his life by causing him financial damage and emotional anguish, and harm his chances to get married in the future." The Judge rejected the petition, saying the a woman's right to choose whether to see a pregnancy to term is anchored in the State's Basic Laws which pertain to the right to physical integrity. As for the allegation of "sperm theft," the Judge advised that the matter should be heard by a civil court, and not by the family court.
While serious questions of law and the right to property, solid or liquid, have emerged from these cases, it took a Jamaican friend of mine, a lawyer, to ask the ultimate question, "Suppose the woman had choked on her oral burden, would her death have been deemed spermicide?"
*Tony Deyal was last seen asking, "What do men and sperm have in common?" The answer most favoured by women is, "They both have a one-in-a-million chance of becoming a human being."
This wrangling between the General Council of the PSA and Watson Duke (beleaguered President) is hard to understand for a number of reasons. These are my observations since the argument began, and I stress that I stand to be corrected on any one of these.
From my perspective, Duke has to go, without any question or doubt. He represents all that is wrong with the labour movement today, and what I had hoped we had left in the past... he is nothing more than an uneducated thug who landed in a position of power and now loathes to give it up.
Hmm, this morning [31st August, 2011] I see Gladys Gafoor is to be recipient of a Public Service Medal of Merit (Gold). I cannot say I agree with this; enough evidence was put forward that this woman is a criminal who was given a free pass by the authorities. Cashing a dead man’s cheque is against the law, fraud against the State [the cheques were issued by the State]. Moving on…
I’ve deliberately withheld these thoughts for the past 2 or 3 days, preferring instead to rethink and observe whether my thoughts bear fruit as I see it. Alas, all my observations point me toward the following:
The typical Trinidadian/Tobagonian is a rubber-lipped, gum-bumping buffoon, clearly devoid of basic intelligence, and/or basic education; eager to venture opinion on matters in which s/he has little understanding, training or education. To make it worse, they demonstrate little evidence of critical thinking. And I say this with the utmost regard for the evidence they provided to justify this opinion.
Take for example, the situation with the teen ‘Granny Quila’ who threatened the Prime Minister via a video posted on YouTube and later on FaceBook. Using only this situation, the evidence to support my opinion is overwhelming.
For one thing… Rockians keep comparing the threats Sasha Mohammed aka ‘Janice Thomas’ made against the reporters of the Trinidad Express, such as this comment by one Marchalis, “One law for Sasha Mohammed, another law for kids.”... This is erroneous on a number of fronts. The most obvious are:
Now one chap asked the question: “But as she is a child, under the age of majority. Can she be held wholly accountable...?”
My response was: “Yes. Unfortunately, in absence of statute clarifying the age of criminal responsibility, common law takes over. The age in common law is 7. Most places have statute putting the age from 8 to 12... she would have been done in anyway.”
My response is a factual response, not an opinion. It was something I checked before posting. Trinidad and Tobago currently has no statute clarifying the age of criminal responsibility! Hence the common law age applies. The reaction? A whole lot of negative comments and ‘thumbs down’ on the Express website. This indicates to me that Rockians cannot recognise facts if you slap them in the face with it. Or they choose to ignore facts in preference for bacchanalised [my word] opinion.
Hear this other fool: “What the child did was wrong, but if I recall from the Sasha Mohamed issue is that cyber bullying is not a crime.
Wait I forgot we do not have a constitution and can be arrested at the whim and fancy of the government...”
Again, dealing with the first part of the statement… they are 2 different issues. On the 2nd part, regarding not having a Constitution, this is such an asinine remark, I feel even the ass will be insulted. Clearly, the Constitution is what gives the conditions for a State of Emergency. Secondly, the Government cannot arrest at its ‘whim and fancy’.. even if that were the case (and I am not saying that the dunceys will not abuse their powers of arrest; I know enough of them to know some will), there have been independent safeguards put in place should some of the aggrieved care to use them.
Then along come fool #3: “She apologized before authorities clamped down on her. exactly, before it [the apology video] turn criminal”
Okay, let me point out that once the video, the first one, was created and posted, it was already criminal. It need not have been viewed to be criminal.
And fool #4: “And when did Reshmi leave her post? Only after they caught her and found out she's a duncey head.”
Sigh… 2 different issues, won’t you know? Comparing apples and oranges never gave a comprehensible answer.
And fool #5: “you know she is a child right? and do you knw that she has rights? and why should she made a n example of? Sasha should have been made an example of”
With rights comes responsibilities… my full response was:
One of the first questions that stumped me, even before I began to study law was by a friend who asked me "What is a right"? He correctly pointed out to me that most persons who argue passionately over rights aren't even aware of what a right is. Like most persons in this forum of the Express.
The second point I want to make is that once one begins to study law, one learns that rights are not endless. All rights have limitations imposed by responsibilities. For example, the right to freedom of expression is limited by the responsibilities to not commit slander or libel or defamation. Rights and responsibilities go hand in hand and neither stands alone.
One of the really surprising things I learnt about law, and not one perpetuated by (American especially) TV dramas, is that the law is dispassionate. By this I mean that it is applied evenly, without personal regard to the parties involved. So the age of a 14 years old is not more significant that that of a 35 years old or an 80 years old in similar circumstances. Nor whether they are male/female, gay/hetero, etc. While the law is dispassionate, that is not to say that a judge cannot take into account individual circumstances at sentencing.Persons may not like what I say on this forum. But I call it as I see it with evidence to back up my position. How many can say the same?
Like I later said, trying to educate this small Island mentality is like casting pearls before swine… still, one or two have shown that not all is lost… the pace of development though is creeping.
