Rishard Khan and

Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith is ap­peal­ing to lo­cal demon­stra­tors sup­port­ing the Unit­ed States-based Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment to be more re­spon­si­ble go­ing for­ward, re­mind­ing that the coun­try is still try­ing to pre­vent a sec­ond wave of COVID-19 in­fec­tions and laws re­main in place to en­sure this is ad­hered to.

“Peo­ple need to be re­spon­si­ble and un­der­stand: do not let your emo­tion get to the point that you breach the reg­u­la­tion, that you prob­a­bly be in­fect­ed, God for­bid and get back home to your loved ones and chil­dren,” Grif­fith told Guardian Me­dia while vis­it­ing a demon­stra­tion out­side the Unit­ed States Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

“You want to protest, let the protest be done in an am­i­ca­ble man­ner. Do not break the law. Ad­here to the reg­u­la­tions as much as pos­si­ble.”

Fol­low­ing the po­lice killing of George Floyd in Min­neapo­lis, USA, on May 25, mass protests broke out across the US against the con­tin­ued killing of black peo­ple there by the po­lice. It has al­so led to an out­pour­ing of sol­i­dar­i­ty to the plight and sparked dis­cus­sions on in­jus­tices faced by peo­ple of African de­scent around the world—even in T&T.

While yes­ter­day’s lo­cal protest was a peace­ful one, ten­sions rose when one demon­stra­tor snatched a po­lice of­fi­cer’s hat and “flipped” him off, while oth­ers at­tempt­ed to stop the of­fi­cer, who was part of the TTPS’ cam­era crew, from film­ing the ac­tiv­i­ty.

Grif­fith said while in his view the demon­stra­tion got out of con­trol at that point, he ex­er­cised flex­i­bil­i­ty as he un­der­stood the com­mu­ni­ty’s pain and stood in sol­i­dar­i­ty with them.

“Had that per­son been ar­rest­ed then it would have been a whole dif­fer­ent an­gle in how the ball would have swung,” he said.

“The reg­u­la­tions in the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance went to­tal­ly out the win­dow with this sit­u­a­tion that took place...this is a very sen­si­tive time in the world. This is a very sen­si­tive time in this coun­try to push the en­ve­lope, even to the ex­tent that it caus­es greater con­cern and pain.”

This is why Grif­fith said he used his dis­cre­tion in over­look­ing the ob­vi­ous vi­o­la­tions of the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions which, for the past two months, have pro­hib­it­ed gath­er­ings of more than five in pub­lic with a fine of $50,000 and six months im­pris­on­ment for breach­ing it.

“This meet­ing that took place here, in many oth­er coun­tries per­sons would have been ar­rest­ed, the crowd dis­persed and there would have been a con­fronta­tion with the po­lice,” Grif­fith said.

“You did not see that. The po­lice ser­vice, in fact, we stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the per­sons who are hurt­ing, who are in pain.”

Giv­en the events that tran­spired yes­ter­day, Grif­fith was if he would ap­prove fur­ther re­quests for such demon­stra­tions.

“Yes. I am go­ing to grant it...I would give such per­mis­sion for a sit­u­a­tion like this,” he said.

Speak­ing dur­ing the demon­stra­tion, spokesman for the group, Muham­mad Muwak­il, said, “We stand­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with our broth­ers and sis­ters in the Unit­ed States at this point in time but al­so to bring light to some of the is­sues that af­fect us here. We are not ex­empt from racism and white su­prema­cy and we should not feel that we are.”

Ear­li­er yes­ter­day, US Am­bas­sador Joseph Mon­del­lo al­so in­ter­act­ed with the demon­stra­tors, al­though the num­bers at that time were sig­nif­i­cant­ly less.