An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Even though the li­cences grant­ed for the No­vem­ber Freeze con­cert sched­uled for to­day at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my, Tarou­ba, were re­voked yes­ter­day, pro­mot­er Kyle Yarde says the po­lice had not won.

He blast­ed the au­thor­i­ties for us­ing, what he called, sub­terfuge in an at­tempt to stop the event and ru­in his com­pa­ny.

Vow­ing that Clas­sic Kings Pro­mo­tions would emerge stronger in the face of this lat­est ad­ver­si­ty, Yarde said the “spite­ful” ef­forts by the po­lice to en­sure the dance­hall event didn’t come off were for nought.

An­nounc­ing the of­fi­cial can­cel­la­tion dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Radis­son Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Yarde said there had been no ev­i­dence that any ad­verse sit­u­a­tions had oc­curred at any of the events they had host­ed over the past few years.

In fact, he boast­ed, “We have nev­er had any in­ci­dents, ac­ci­dents, or even a fight at any of our events.”

Se­nior Mag­is­trate Tara­matie Ram­dass re­voked the oc­ca­sion­al bar and dance­hall li­cences that had been grant­ed to Clas­sic Kings Pro­mo­tions yes­ter­day, af­ter the po­lice, through at­tor­ney Ravi Ra­j­coomar, SC, in­formed the court that the event had been can­celled.

Yarde’s team suc­ceed­ed in se­cur­ing the li­cences on No­vem­ber 14, af­ter po­lice ob­ject­ed to the event on the ba­sis that it posed a threat to pub­lic safe­ty and the height­ened po­ten­tial for gun and gang vi­o­lence.

Sev­er­al Ja­maican dance­hall artistes were billed to per­form in­clud­ing Na­jeeri, Chron­ic Law, Go­v­ana and Phenique.

The two main acts, Na­jeeri and Chron­ic Law, re­port­ed­ly pulled out of the event af­ter their re­spec­tive camps were al­leged­ly in­formed they would be de­tained by im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials once they land­ed in Trinidad and sent back to Ja­maica.

Sig­nalling their in­ten­tion to pur­sue le­gal ac­tion against the po­lice lat­er on, Yarde al­so as­sured peo­ple who had al­ready pur­chased tick­ets that they would be re­fund­ed in due time as a process would be im­ple­ment­ed to en­sure they got their mon­ey back.

Last week, the TTPS re­voked per­mis­sion to host a pub­lic par­ty at Beetham Gar­dens to en­sure pub­lic safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty.

An­cel “Prezi/Chemist” Vil­lafana’s birth­day bash, which was to take place on No­vem­ber 9, was ini­tial­ly giv­en the green light, but af­ter an ap­peal by the po­lice the per­mis­sion was re­voked.