Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has crit­i­cised for­mer UNC min­is­ter and for­mer High Court judge Her­bert Vol­ney for com­ments he post­ed on Face­book last night say­ing the com­mis­sion­er could not "law­ful­ly stop any­one from hav­ing a par­ty at their home."

Grif­fith re­spond­ed to the post hours af­ter co-or­di­nat­ing an op­er­a­tion in which 16 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed at a se­cret COVID-19 par­ty at Ali­cia's Guest House, St Ann’s, with a team of of­fi­cers from the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT).

Vol­ney seemed to be re­spond­ing to Grif­fith’s state­ment on Thurs­day that po­lice would stop any­one who hosts COVID par­ties at their homes over the long East­er week­end, not­ing such events pose a threat be­cause of their po­ten­tial to spread the COVID-19 virus.

On Fri­day, how­ev­er, Grif­fith ad­vised "law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zens to dis­re­gard the voic­es of those des­per­ate for at­ten­tion, and try­ing their best to make them­selves rel­e­vant, but now giv­ing in­cor­rect and in­ap­pro­pri­ate ad­vice."

Mak­ing di­rect ref­er­ence to Vol­ney, Grif­fith said he ex­pect­ed bet­ter from a for­mer judge.

"As a for­mer min­is­ter of jus­tice and for­mer judge, this is the best ad­vice that he wish­es to give the pub­lic in such dif­fi­cult times when lives are be­ing lost? Telling them of their rights to do wrong?" Grif­fith asked.

He chid­ed Vol­ney for the "ir­re­spon­si­ble and in­cor­rect ad­vice," say­ing he was putting the lives of peo­ple and oth­ers at risk by mak­ing such state­ments.

Grif­fith said, "There are def­i­nite­ly cer­tain laws that can be used dur­ing this pe­ri­od and the COP wish­es to as­sure the pub­lic that he would use it. Do not have COVID-19 quar­an­tine par­ties."

Ear­ly on Good Fri­day morn­ing, hours af­ter Grif­fith had is­sued a stern warn­ing about host­ing COVID par­ties, he co-or­di­nat­ed a raid at a se­cret COVID-19 par­ty at Ali­cia's Guest House.

Eight men and eight Venezue­lan women who were scant­i­ly dressed were held by Grif­fith and his team around 12.30 am.

In a re­lease about the raid on Fri­day, Grif­fith said, "If you did not hear, then you would feel. No more warn­ings. I have in­for­mants through­out the coun­try and we would turn up when these peo­ple least ex­pect it. We an­tic­i­pat­ed this, as there are sim­i­lar fools in oth­er coun­tries do­ing the same."

Grif­fith said sim­i­lar quar­an­tine par­ties had been held in New York and the Unit­ed King­dom - where a num­ber of peo­ple died from the virus af­ter at­tend­ing these par­ties.

"We know of copy­cats so we ex­pect­ed pro­mot­ers here would try to do the same thing. As I said at the me­dia con­fer­ence(on Thurs­day), this health cri­sis is a tick­ing time bomb and now is not the time to drop our guard or be­come com­pla­cent."

Based on po­lice in­tel­li­gence, Grif­fith said 50 busi­ness­men were plan­ning to at­tend the par­ty at Ali­cia's Guest House sched­uled for 1 am. But he said a marked po­lice ve­hi­cle that drove past the lo­ca­tion ear­li­er might have had pro­mot­ers skep­ti­cal. Grif­fith said the po­lice had lit­tle choice but to move in ear­li­er than planned on the es­tab­lish­ment.

When the po­lice team raid­ed the guest house they found 16 per­sons around the pool," dis­play­ing no form of so­cial dis­tanc­ing, in­volv­ing Span­ish-speak­ing women con­duct­ing lewd danc­ing and breach­ing the reg­u­la­tions as it re­lates to more than five per­sons be­ing as­sem­bled in the same area."

The 16 ar­rest­ed peo­ple, in­clud­ing two who had the key to the prop­er­ty, were tak­en to three dif­fer­ent po­lice sta­tions to be ques­tioned. Some were tak­en to West End Po­lice Sta­tion, oth­ers to Four Roads Po­lice sta­tion and the re­main­der to Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion in Port-of-Spain.

Grif­fith said the own­er of the premis­es is al­so ex­pect­ed to be ques­tioned in re­la­tion to the in­ci­dent.

The sus­pects could be charged un­der the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance - which was changed al­most two weeks ago to re­duce the num­ber of per­sons in pub­lic spaces not deemed es­sen­tial from ten to five. Those charged un­der the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance can face a fine of $50,000 or six months im­pris­on­ment.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley last Mon­day at ex­tend­ed the Stay at Home or­der for all non-es­sen­tial per­sons from April 15th to April 30th as the Gov­ern­ment tight­ened its reg­u­la­tions to deal with the spread of the COVID-19 virus.