The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has stat­ed that re­cent pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions do not af­fect cit­i­zens’ con­sti­tu­tion­al right to free­dom of move­ment and that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) can not ar­rest per­sons for fail­ing to abide by the Gov­ern­ment’s call for cit­i­zens to stay at home dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. 

State at­tor­ney Michelle Ben­jamin, act­ing on be­half of the Of­fice of the Chief State So­lic­i­tor, made the state­ments yes­ter­day in a re­sponse let­ter to a threat of a law­suit is­sued by po­lit­i­cal and so­cial ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj, on Tues­day. 

Ben­jamin said: “Al­though it is self-ev­i­dent­ly in the pub­lic in­ter­est for all so­cial in­ter­ac­tions to be re­strict­ed at this time in the in­ter­est of achiev­ing what has be­come well-known as ‘flat­ten­ing the curve’ or slow­ing down the rate of in­fec­tion of COVID-19 and which in­formed the COVID Reg­u­la­tions, it is ac­cept­ed that there is no le­gal re­stric­tion up­on mem­bers of the pub­lic from move­ment out­side of the pro­scrip­tions pro­vid­ed in the COVID Reg­u­la­tions.” 

“In­deed as you ac­cept in your let­ter, the po­lice may use moral sua­sion to ap­peal to the in­di­vid­ual so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of cit­i­zens to main­tain iso­la­tion as much as pos­si­ble in or­der to con­tin­ue to flat­ten the curve,” she added. 

Stat­ing the TTPS mem­bers had re­ceived le­gal ad­vice over the scope and ap­pli­ca­tion of the reg­u­la­tions, Ben­jamin claimed that they (the po­lice) were ad­vised to per­suade per­sons to re­turn to their homes and that they could on­ly ar­rest cit­i­zens in cas­es when they are in breach of the reg­u­la­tion, pro­hibit­ing gath­er­ings of five and more per­sons in pub­lic. 

As Ben­jamin main­tained that Ma­haraj did not have a valid case to pur­sue, she claimed that the po­lice had not in­fringed his or oth­er cit­i­zens’ rights dur­ing their en­force­ment of the reg­u­la­tions. 

“A cur­so­ry pub­lic ex­cur­sion will demon­strate that there is no wide-scale po­lice re­stric­tion in T&T. There is traf­fic on the streets, and gro­ceries and oth­er per­mit­ted busi­ness­es have had to vol­un­tar­i­ly im­ple­ment crowd man­age­ment strate­gies in or­der to re­duce the po­ten­tial spread of in­fec­tion at their crowd­ed busi­ness places,” Ben­jamin said. 

She not­ed that the reg­u­la­tions had to be amend­ed sev­er­al times to re­duce open­ing hours of es­sen­tial busi­ness­es and to deem restau­rants non-es­sen­tial based on cit­i­zens ex­er­cis­ing their rights to ig­nore the ad­vice to stay at home. 

“In the event that your client was im­prop­er­ly re­strained (which we ex­press­ly do not ad­mit) it is clear that this was not in keep­ing with the pol­i­cy and prac­tice of the po­lice ser­vice and could ground no gen­er­al de­c­la­ra­tion as has been iden­ti­fied,” Ben­jamin said. 

In a re­sponse is­sued yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Ma­haraj’s lawyer Dou­glas Bay­ley made note of Ben­jamin’s state­ments but stat­ed that his client still in­tends to pur­sue the law­suit. 

Bay­ley sug­gest­ed that Ben­jamin’s state­ment high­light­ed cit­i­zens’ right to re­ject the State’s ad­vice. 

“If the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al now ac­cepts that there is no stay-at-home law which the TTPS can en­force but as­serts that they can use moral sua­sion to ask peo­ple to com­ply with this pol­i­cy, the State must now equal­ly ac­cept that cit­i­zens are free to re­ject that sua­sion and in­sist that they pro­ceed past the road­block and con­tin­ue with their jour­ney,” Bay­ley said. 

 He claimed that some cit­i­zens had been com­ply­ing based on their fear of be­ing ar­rest­ed, which arose from al­leged­ly mis­lead­ing state­ments made by the Gov­ern­ment and the TTPS. 

Bay­ley al­so not­ed that his client did not ac­cept the moral sua­sion of po­lice ar­gu­ment as sug­gest­ed by Ben­jamin. 

“On the con­trary, we con­sid­er this to be an il­le­gal and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al use of po­lice pow­er, as the TTPS sim­ply does not have the au­thor­i­ty in law to stop cit­i­zens from go­ing about their dai­ly ac­tiv­i­ties for the pur­pose of per­suad­ing them to com­ply with a Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy,” Bay­ley said.

Bay­ley al­so ac­cused the AG’s Of­fice of at­tempt­ing to down­play the TTPS’s al­leged im­prop­er en­force­ment of the Gov­ern­ment’s stay-at-home ad­vi­so­ry by claim­ing that ex­ten­sive road­blocks, which be­gan last week, were due to “re­port­ed in­creas­es in crime”. 

In a re­sponse sent late yes­ter­day evening, Ben­jamin crit­i­cised Bay­ley’s re­sponse and stat­ed that her of­fice made no ad­mis­sions or con­ces­sions. 

“We note as well that your client con­tin­ues to re­ly and mis­rep­re­sent the state­ments made by the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and to pro­mote a false and mis­lead­ing nar­ra­tive that the Gov­ern­ment and/or the TTPS are act­ing con­trary to law. We ask that your client cease and de­sist from do­ing so,” Ben­jamin said.