The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is cur­rent­ly be­ing bom­bard­ed by many ques­tions from mem­bers of the pub­lic on what they can and can­not do dur­ing the State of Emer­gency.

Among the ques­tions is whether peo­ple are al­lowed to walk their dog, or if they can ex­er­cise on the streets with­in their gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s TTPS’ me­dia con­fer­ence, head of the Le­gal Unit Chris­t­ian Chan­dler ex­plained that the pow­ers of the TTPS are far and wide and in a State of Emer­gency (SoE) sit­u­a­tion, that gives a cer­tain amount of pow­er to the po­lice.

“The reg­u­la­tions spec­i­fy that there are to be no out­door ac­tiv­i­ties. Even if you are in a pri­vate com­mu­ni­ty and there are streets run­ning through it, then you should be in­doors. You should not be out­doors ex­er­cis­ing, walk­ing, etc. Peo­ple have asked through the hot­line, ‘Can I walk my dog?’ That is not es­sen­tial. That is not set out in the reg­u­la­tions, so you are not to be out­side. Ques­tions such as ‘Can I con­sume al­co­hol out­side?’ No you can­not con­sume al­co­hol out­side recre­ation-wise. ‘Can I go to play in the park?’ No you can­not, that’s a no-no as well. And of course, we know go­ing to the beach is a no-no,” Chan­dler said.

“I think the SoE has been lost to many per­sons, be­cause we see many cit­i­zens go­ing about their busi­ness like there isn’t an SoE. So let us un­der­stand you would be in the pub­lic do­main for two rea­sons, if you’re con­sid­ered an es­sen­tial work­er and on your way to per­form those es­sen­tial du­ties, or if you’re on the way to seek an es­sen­tial ser­vice – su­per­mar­ket, get food, or med­ical as­sis­tance, but out­side of that you would be chal­lenged from time to time by po­lice of­fi­cers who would en­quire from you, well what is your busi­ness out­side,” Chan­dler added.

With re­spect to gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties and whether or not they can be ac­cessed by the po­lice, Chan­dler replied: “We don’t want to get in­to a con­fronta­tion on what can and can­not be done. The fact of the mat­ter is the pow­ers of the TTPS are far and wide. We are in an SoE, which there­fore gives a de­gree of pow­er to the po­lice. We want to act with­in the re­mit law and are ask­ing cit­i­zens to abide by that.

“So if you live in a gat­ed com­mu­ni­ty and there are streets that run through­out the com­mu­ni­ty, can you ex­er­cise? Run? Walk? The reg­u­la­tions specif­i­cal­ly said that there are no out­door ac­tiv­i­ties. So even in a gat­ed com­mu­ni­ty, you should be in­doors, you should not be ex­er­cis­ing and so on.

“You’re not to be out­side un­less you have a spe­cif­ic rea­son to be.”

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith said the suc­cess of an SoE at times is sole­ly mea­sured on what it was ini­tial­ly de­signed for, be it to stop in­sur­gents from de­stroy­ing a democ­ra­cy or to stop crime or to peg back a ma­jor virus.

In this case, he said that the mis­sion of the TTPS is to en­sure that all cit­i­zens ad­here to the new reg­u­la­tions and laws that have been ini­ti­at­ed to re­duce the spread of the virus.

He asked for all cit­i­zens to re­spect and ad­here to the law­ful di­rec­tives made by the po­lice when ap­proached and added that the po­lice ought to re­spect cit­i­zens as well and not abuse their pow­ers.

“I give the as­sur­ance to the pub­lic that one of the ma­jor poli­cies that I in­tend to achieve is to en­sure that there is min­i­mum, in any re­port, of abuse by po­lice of­fi­cers dur­ing this pe­ri­od. We are not per­fect. But we would have learned from our mis­takes in 1970, 1990 and 2011 and we will min­imise these,” Grif­fith said.

—Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant