JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, February 17, 2025

CoP happy as public finally conforms to COVID spacing

by

Shaliza Hassanali
1782 days ago
20200403

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith on Thursday ad­mit­ted it was un­for­tu­nate he had to is­sue threats to cus­tomers stand­ing out­side banks, su­per­mar­kets, phar­ma­cies and mar­kets for fail­ing to com­ply with so­cial dis­tanc­ing to pre­vent the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

How­ev­er, his on­ly dis­ap­point­ment was that he took too long to act to get these cus­tomers to do what was nec­es­sary.

At a press con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, Grif­fith threat­ened to close busi­ness­es where cus­tomers failed to com­ply with so­cial dis­tanc­ing out­side their premis­es.

How­ev­er, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in re­sponse to the is­sue, said the CoP had no pow­er to shut the doors of banks and su­per­mar­kets.

On Thurs­day, how­ev­er, Grif­fith thanked busi­ness­es in the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors for be­ing in­stru­men­tal in heed­ing his ad­vice by plac­ing mark­ers six feet apart out­side their doors in or­der for cit­i­zens to con­form to the so­cial dis­tanc­ing. Good sense, he said, had fi­nal­ly pre­vailed, adding there was a “to­tal turn around” yes­ter­day com­pared to the mad­ness the day be­fore (Wednes­day).

“That is all the TTPS has been ask­ing for be­cause we have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pre­serve life and to en­sure law and or­der,” Grif­fith told Guardian Me­dia in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

He said some in­sti­tu­tions were on­ly fo­cussing on main­tain­ing so­cial dis­tanc­ing in­side while peo­ple out­side were not ob­serv­ing this nor were there any set struc­ture.

“I don’t think they were tak­ing this se­ri­ous­ly. Every­one seemed to have turned a blind eye to the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and to the tick­ing time bomb to per­sons who were con­gest­ed on the out­side,” he said, re­it­er­at­ing this was a recipe for the virus to spread rapid­ly.

“It is un­for­tu­nate that I had to use vir­tu­al threats which I do have the au­thor­i­ty to do. I don’t make idle threats. It would have giv­en me no plea­sure to have to shut them down. My on­ly dis­ap­point­ment is that I took too long. I should have made that de­ci­sion be­fore Wednes­day.”

On his Face­book page yes­ter­day, Grif­fith al­so wrote that with­in re­cent times many ex­perts feel they know what pow­ers the po­lice have. He said there was a view that the po­lice had pow­ers to stop and ar­rest peo­ple and de­mand jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for them be­ing out­side a state of emer­gency.

“No, we can­not,” he said.

Oth­ers, mean­while, hold the view that the po­lice do not have pow­ers to close a busi­ness if it is caus­ing lives to be at risk.

“Yes, we can,” he said to this.

In oth­er words, Grif­fith said, “The pow­ers you think we have we do not. And the pow­ers that you do not think we have, we most cer­tain­ly do.”

De­spite the move by most busi­ness­es to com­ply with his re­quest yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said to en­sure law and or­der, over 100 emer­gency re­sponse pa­trol of­fi­cers sup­port­ed by 100 of­fi­cers on mo­tor­bikes were dis­patched out­side busi­ness­es to en­sure peo­ple did the right thing. The TTPS al­so mon­i­tored the sit­u­a­tion via CCTV cam­eras.

Grif­fith said the vast ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple gath­ered out­side the es­tab­lish­ments were se­nior cit­i­zens.

“Be­cause of that I had to take de­ci­sive ac­tion,” he said, adding all the pub­lic need­ed was guid­ance, lead­er­ship and di­rec­tion, which they fol­lowed af­ter mea­sures were put in places by the busi­ness­es.

Gen­er­al­ly, he said peo­ple showed ma­tu­ri­ty and were re­spon­si­ble.

“That is what you call the law of com­mon sense. Every­one got in­to their sec­tion,” he said.

He said a few busi­ness­es did not con­form to the so­cial dis­tanc­ing of their cus­tomers but the TTPS will en­sure they com­ply go­ing ahead.

Luck­i­ly, Grif­fith said no one was ar­rest­ed for not com­ply­ing with the or­der.

Asked if Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young or the PM had reached out to him based on the stance he took on Wednes­day, Grif­fith said there was no rea­son for ei­ther of them to do so.

“I don’t think there was a con­cern. I think there was a mis­un­der­stand­ing. How the ques­tion was re­layed to the Prime Min­is­ter at that me­dia con­fer­ence, it gave the im­pres­sion that the com­mis­sion­er just de­cid­ed to shut down banks and su­per­mar­kets per­ma­nent­ly,” Grif­fith said.

COVID-19


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored