The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has tak­en a ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach to cit­i­zens who in­tend to block roads when car­ry­ing out protest ac­tion.

Speak­ing at the week­ly po­lice press brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain on Wednes­day, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith re­peat­ed­ly said such mea­sures had no place in a mod­ern so­ci­ety.

"I am not say­ing it is not your right to protest, but I am humbly plead­ing with the pub­lic that the days of block­ing roads and burn­ing bridges and in­fring­ing on the rights of oth­ers to free­dom of move­ment has to stop," he said.

Grif­fith said the TTPS will as­sist cit­i­zens with hold­ing peace­ful protests once they seek per­mis­sion first and obey the law.

"It is your de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right to protest and the TTPS will pro­vide all of the sup­port that you would need. We would pro­vide the se­cu­ri­ty and I would pro­vide the ap­proval for you to protest, but you must protest with­in the law," Grif­fith said.

Grif­fith re­peat­ed­ly apol­o­gised for the TTPS's han­dling of a protest by stu­dents of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) for ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty at their St Au­gus­tine cam­pus last week.

While he ad­mit­ted he could not com­ment ex­ten­sive­ly on the case as two stu­dents are cur­rent­ly fac­ing charges be­fore the court over the in­ci­dent, Grif­fith did con­fess that his of­fi­cers could have han­dled the sit­u­a­tion dif­fer­ent­ly.

De­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as un­for­tu­nate, he said high­ly trained of­fi­cers from the Guard and Emer­gency Branch (GEB) should have been called in to per­form crowd con­trol du­ties that were even­tu­al­ly in­stead done by po­lice of­fi­cers of the North­ern Di­vi­sion.

"When it is you are do­ing crowd con­trol drills it is not ap­pro­pri­ate for the of­fi­cers to have ri­fles slung over them whilst try­ing to ap­pre­hend an in­di­vid­ual. That can cause neg­li­gent dis­charges or a sit­u­a­tion of con­fronta­tion," Grif­fith said as he claimed to give an hon­est and trans­par­ent as­sess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion.

How­ev­er, Grif­fith said he would not apol­o­gise for the po­lice's ac­tions in ar­rest­ing the stu­dents af­ter they al­leged­ly re­sist­ed them.

"The same way you have seen me op­er­ate in deal­ing with over­time and rogue po­lice of­fi­cers, I would be the first to con­demn and re­move any po­lice of­fi­cer who dis­re­spects the uni­form. But in the same man­ner, I would be there to sup­port my troops.

"We can­not have this con­tin­ue where we feel it is our right to re­sist po­lice of­fi­cers and break the law," Grif­fith added.

Grif­fith al­so men­tioned an­oth­er in­ci­dent on Mon­day in which a po­lice of­fi­cer was record­ed slap­ping a maxi taxi dri­ver af­ter he al­leged­ly dis­obeyed the of­fi­cer’s in­struc­tions not to dri­ve through a flood­ed seg­ment of the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route (PBR).

"He had to sprint to catch the maxi and based on that he op­er­at­ed in a man­ner that prob­a­bly would not be be­com­ing of a po­lice of­fi­cer," Grif­fith said, as he stat­ed he would not take dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against the of­fi­cer un­til he in­ves­ti­gates the in­ci­dent fur­ther.

Grif­fith was al­so crit­i­cal of so­cial me­dia cov­er­age of both in­ci­dents, which he claimed por­trayed one-sided sto­ries.

"Just as in UWI or the sit­u­a­tion with the maxi taxi, we on­ly start record­ing the parts when the po­lice of­fi­cer would have maybe gone over­board and not what re­al­ly caused the sit­u­a­tion in the first place," he said.

In ad­di­tion to util­is­ing the GEB in fu­ture sce­nar­ios, Grif­fith said the TTPS is mov­ing to in­tro­duce a min­i­mum use of force pol­i­cy.

"It is not their fault. If po­lice of­fi­cers were not giv­en the tools and train­ing be­cause that is how they would have op­er­at­ed in the past, I in­tend to rec­ti­fy that," he said.

Un­der the pol­i­cy, po­lice of­fi­cers would be trained on meth­ods to dif­fuse sit­u­a­tions, with the last re­sort be­ing the use of dead­ly force. The pol­i­cy in­cludes the use of non-lethal weapons such as pep­per spray, tasers and rub­ber bul­lets.

Grif­fith said the weapons would be is­sued to the new­ly-formed Emer­gency Re­sponse Unit af­ter they re­ceived train­ing on their ap­pro­pri­ate use.

"I in­tend to put heavy em­pha­sis on cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing to en­sure po­lice of­fi­cers un­der­stand that jump high jump low, I am not their boss, you are the boss­es of the TTPS. We are here as ser­vants to pro­vide you with the cour­tesy and the safe­ty you re­quire and right­ly de­serve," he said.