Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has com­mend­ed all po­lice of­fi­cers for what he de­scribed as their ex­em­plary and pro­fes­sion­al con­duct dur­ing Mon­day’s gen­er­al elec­tion.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day Grif­fith not­ed that at least 95 per cent of po­lice of­fi­cers turned out for du­ty on elec­tion day.

He said the fig­ure could have been high­er, not­ing that sev­er­al po­lice of­fi­cers had test­ed pos­i­tive for the COVID-19 virus, while many oth­ers were in quar­an­tine.

He said po­lice of­fi­cers re­port­ed for du­ty as ear­ly as 2 am on Mon­day and worked un­til every polling sta­tion had com­plet­ed the count­ing of votes.

He said apart from the elec­tion day du­ty, of­fi­cers of the TTPS al­so had to car­ry out their dai­ly rou­tine of polic­ing and en­sur­ing the coun­try was safe.

Grif­fith said said from all re­ports he re­ceived, the of­fi­cers were very pro­fes­sion­al, en­sur­ing that all the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance guide­lines were en­forced at polling sta­tions.

He al­so em­pha­sised that the Po­lice Ser­vice re­mains the front line State agency and has been func­tion­ing non-stop over the last nine months, mov­ing from the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions on De­cem­ber 2, to Christ­mas, to Car­ni­val and to the COVID-19 lock­down which start­ed in March 2020.

Apart from the elec­tion day du­ty, Grif­fith said his of­fi­cers were us­ing new tech­nol­o­gy, all in an ef­fort to re­duce the crime rate in the coun­try.

He said as of yes­ter­day, there were 64 mur­ders less than the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year while over­all crime had dropped by 25 per cent.