Sto­ries by

Gail Alexan­der

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day called on peo­ple to can­cel the COVID par­ties they have been plan­ning.

Grif­fith said they had in­for­ma­tion that sev­er­al “COVID par­ties” were be­ing planned for this East­er week­end across the coun­try, but warned they should be shelved since po­lice will be crack­ing down on this. Po­lice are al­so grap­pling with rob­beries which have been oc­cur­ring amid the COVID lock­down, he con­firmed at yes­ter­day’s dai­ly COVID-19 me­dia brief­ing.

Grif­fith said the po­lice knew cer­tain pri­vate “COVID” par­ties were be­ing planned for the hol­i­day week­end de­spite the au­thor­i­ties’ calls for iso­la­tion, so­cial dis­tanc­ing and stay­ing home. He said there’d re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that peo­ple have in­vit­ed friends and neigh­bours to come to their homes for the par­ties.

“This is a tick­ing time bomb,” Grif­fith said.

“In New York, some peo­ple died af­ter invit­ing peo­ple over. We ask peo­ple to be re­spon­si­ble. We haven’t in­ter­vened in any par­ties but we know they’re be­ing planned, es­pe­cial­ly for this week­end.”

To en­sure such ac­tiv­i­ties do not take place, Grif­fith said po­lice will be mon­i­tor­ing where cars are parked out­side homes. He said po­lice will take ac­tion to pre­vent such gath­er­ings and called on mem­bers of the pub­lic to say some­thing if they see some­thing.

The Min­istry of Health’s evening COVID-19 bul­letin showed that some 1,004 sam­ples had been con­duct­ed by CARPHA and 109 of them had been pos­i­tive cas­es while there were eight deaths: two women and six men.

Grif­fith said po­lice’s an­ti-COVID mea­sures over this hol­i­day week­end al­so in­clude es­tab­lish­ing “heavy road­blocks” in front po­lice sta­tions and stop-and-search ex­er­cis­es. He said peo­ple will have to jus­ti­fy be­ing out af­ter 6 pm and par­tic­u­lar­ly 8 pm.

He said three Cen­tral Trinidad peo­ple had so far been ar­rest­ed for hav­ing bars open but there’s gen­er­al­ly com­pli­ance to the Stay-at-Home reg­u­la­tions by the vast ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple.

“Po­lice have in­ter­act­ed with peo­ple for breach­ing or­ders and the per­sons said they didn’t un­der­stand the reg­u­la­tions and lat­er dis­persed or closed up,” he said.

“We try to use per­sua­sion as much as pos­si­ble since the more peo­ple ar­rest­ed—and hav­ing them in prison or in­ter­act­ing with po­lice—the more it can open up av­enues for virus spread. It’s not that we don’t in­tend to ar­rest but it looks like peo­ple are heed­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.”

On bak­eries in re­mote ar­eas re­main­ing open and liquor marts con­tin­u­ing to ad­ver­tise, Grif­fith said, “While TTPS has thou­sands of of­fi­cers, it’s im­pos­si­ble to lock down every sin­gle street.

“When peo­ple open and they see po­lice around they close, try­ing to beat the sys­tem ... mak­ing it very dif­fi­cult for us.”

Places with liquor li­cences must close, he said. He hint­ed, how­ev­er, that “some­thing may change in the near fu­ture” but didn’t ex­pand. He’s al­so ad­vis­ing su­per­mar­kets that the pol­i­cy on lim­it­ing num­bers doesn’t mean al­low­ing on­ly five peo­ple in­to a store at a time. He rec­om­mend­ed judg­ing on a min­i­mum dis­tance of 75-feet per per­son in the store.

Grif­fith al­so said peo­ple have chal­lenged po­lice when they were ad­vised to wear masks. He said po­lice aren’t try­ing to pro­file peo­ple when they have masks and some­times banks ask cus­tomers to tem­porar­i­ly re­move masks for video footage. Say­ing it was dif­fi­cult to say if the per­son in a mask is a crim­i­nal or not, he said the sit­u­a­tion was very flex­i­ble.

How­ev­er, Grif­fith ad­mit­ted the sit­u­a­tion has pre­sent­ed al­most a “vir­tu­al war zone out there” and he’s ap­pealed for peo­ple to tell po­lice if they “see some­thing”, in­clud­ing breach of COVID or­ders in crime hotspots.

“Help us help you,” he said.

Grif­fith said a dif­fer­ent type of crime would be oc­cur­ring as peo­ple stayed home. He con­firmed rob­beries have been tak­ing place, es­pe­cial­ly on Char­lotte Street, Port-of-Spain. While he said it wasn’t loot­ing, he said peo­ple had been break­ing in­to closed stores and head­ing to George Street with wheel­bar­rows of items Po­lice had since in­creased ca­pac­i­ty and spoke with down­town busi­ness­peo­ple about the is­sue.

On an­oth­er as­pect, he said T&T was a very large coun­try and try­ing to “lock it down” in a sit­u­a­tion like this “is very dif­fi­cult.”

Grif­fith said po­lice’s biggest con­cern was so­cial me­dia and ad­vised cau­tion on fake news, which can cause un­due pan­ic. He said re­cent­ly there’d been mes­sages cir­cu­lat­ing about Char­lotte Street and the word “loot­ing” arose but loot­ing hadn’t oc­curred.