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).”