Loud music from the boom boxes at the Police Sports Club Ground have seen persons living in the area and patients of the nearby St Joseph Mercy Hospital complaining bitterly about the discomfort caused.
Philip Allsopp and Alfred Bhulai in their recent letters to the editor of Stabroek News raised their concerns over the way in which music was played to the max at the recent police sporting events.
They also stated that the law enforcers, who are supposed to be the ones maintaining law and order, are the ones who are breaking the noise nuisance law in this instance.
When contacted by this newspaper to comment on the issue, Police PRO Ivelaw Whittaker declined to do so as he stated that he doesn’t know of the matter and “will look into it.”
According to Bhulai, his father who is a patient at the hospital related to doctors there that “hooligans were disturbing him with loud music.” Bhulai went on to explain that this would have indeed affected his father, as when at home the 81-year-old “can’t stand anything loud” as it makes him “confused”.
Bhulai, who works as an energy technologist, stated that people nowadays don’t know what noise does to them. “Music, if played too loudly [even if it’s classical music] can cause persons to become stupefied.”
This sense of culture that our society propagates, he explained, “will produce dummies.”
In a telephone interview with Stabroek News, Bhulai said he has not made a complaint to the police as he feels it’s a waste of time. “Morning right through afternoon” he said the officers played their music, and it was only with the intervention of rain at around 10pm that the noise came to a halt.
“Senior police officers have often said that their personnel intakes are a product of society, but they obviously feel that excuses them,” he stated in his letter.
Allsopp, in his letter stated that he has been living in the vicinity of the Police Sports Club Ground for about thirty years.
This resident experienced peace for about ten years, but this was disturbed by the officers’ celebrations in which loudspeakers were used. Allsopp in his letter stated that he and his family, along with the hospital authorities had approached the police about the situation, but “we were not readily understood.” Instead, he said “more recently the situation became so disgraceful that we sought the intervention of an attorney-at-law to intercede with the Commissioner of Police on our behalf.
We were granted respite for only a few weeks when we had to endure an onslaught on our sanity when the police held their sports meeting on August 5.” It was on this date that Allsopp was in agreement with Bhulai about the noise going on from morning until close to midnight when the rain stopped it.
The frustrated man stated that he heard when Commissioner Henry Greene arrived and thought that this would’ve made an impact on the noise level, but this was not so. “I am an outpatient of the St. Joseph Mercy Hospital and go there frequently and have often seen the police taking in accident victims to the Emergency Room. They know the kind of patient liable to be affected by this kind of disturbance. They also know of the existence of a hospice there and yet they are disposed to ignore a plea for restraint, even in the presence of their Commissioner,” Allsopp stated.
According to him, the noise was so deafening that all the glass windows in his residence rattled like a diaphragm. “It was the worst case of trial by percussion in all my years of residence in the area. The hospital authorities will, no doubt, speak for themselves but I considered it irresponsible, in poor taste and injurious to health,” he stated.
The man said that the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the hospital had explained that her telephone calls to the Police Public Relations Office “were virtually ignored.” Allsopp himself even solicited the assistance of Force Control, but “there appeared to be no effect.”
In another letter to the editor on the issue, Allsopp had expressed his gratification over the fact that some time ago the Minister of Home Affairs had expressed the view that the police should seize the equipment of the offenders as the surest way to curb the noise nuisance. However, he said this caused him to raise the question as to who was responsible for taking such action if the offenders were the police themselves.
The hospital administrator was not available for comment.
