Casan­dra Thomp­son�Forbes

Grid­lock gripped hun­dreds of com­muters this morn­ing in north, south, cen­tral east and west Trinidad, and parts of To­ba­go.

The­Guardian un­der­stands com­muters leav­ing San Fer­nan­do were de­layed for up tot­wo hours or more in traf­fic on the north­bound lane, just to get to Gas­par­il­lo. Stand­still traf­fic backed up in­to San Fer­nan­do, clog­ging the­By-Pass Road and caus­ing hun­dreds of com­muters to ar­rive late to school and work.

Com­muters in To­ba­go were al­so se­vere­ly af­fect­ed.First Citzens Rox­bor­ough Branch and Re­pub­lic Bank Auchenskeoh Branch re­mained closed, and staff were re­port­ed­ly to be stuck in traf­fic.

Al­so among the ca­su­al­i­ties are those sched­uled to fly with Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) this morn­ing. Sev­er­al re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al CAL flights were de­layed, and apost on CAL's Face­book page­said that the air­line would waive penal­ties for af­fect­ed pas­sen­gers.

In West, po­lice ve­hi­cles were seend dri­ving east along the west­bound lane on the West­ern Main Road, Co­corite to avoid the stand­still traf­fic caused by their own ear­ly-morn­ing road­block in the area.In this video, one com­muter is vis­i­bly up­set as po­lice search the con­tents of a bag in his trunk this morn­ing.

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Pub­lic out­rage bub­bled on so­cial me­dia, as dri­vers were forced to sit in stand­still traf­fic along ma­jor road­ways for up to an hour or more, while po­lice con­duct­ed stop and search ex­er­cis­es at ma­jor ar­ter­ies dur­ing rush hour.

It is the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive week­day that po­lice have cho­sen to con­duct ear­ly-morn­ing road­blocks at that time, and pub­lic sen­ti­ment is com­ing to a boil.On Fri­day, scores of com­muters were un­avoid­ably af­fect­ed by ear­ly-morn­ing grid­lock traf­fic on the west­bound Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way, al­so the re­sult of a po­lice ex­er­cise.