Po­lice used pep­per spray dur­ing a con­fronta­tion in Port-of-Spain on Fri­day night and ar­rest­ed eight peo­ple who were in breach of the COVID-19 health reg­u­la­tions. Of­fi­cers of the Port-of-Spain Task Force and Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion held one woman and sev­en men.

A me­dia re­lease from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice said of­fi­cers were on mo­bile pa­trol around mid­night on Fri­day in the vicin­i­ty of Queen and Nel­son streets when they ob­served a group of peo­ple con­sum­ing al­co­hol in the pub­lic in con­tra­ven­tion of the COVID-19 Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions. The of­fi­cers ap­proached the group and in­formed them of the breach­es, which re­sult­ed in the in­di­vid­u­als be­com­ing irate and us­ing ob­scene lan­guage against the of­fi­cers.

The re­lease stat­ed that of­fi­cers ar­rest­ed a woman, but mem­bers of the group con­front­ed them and be­gan throw­ing ob­jects and mis­siles in their di­rec­tion. The of­fi­cers sought as­sis­tance from the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion and Sgt Alexan­der and oth­ers re­spond­ed and used pep­per spray to sub­due and ar­rest them in ac­cor­dance with the Use of Force Pol­i­cy. The eight are ex­pect­ed to be charged with var­i­ous of­fences.

"Dur­ing the in­ci­dent, sev­er­al loud ex­plo­sions were heard com­ing from the rooftop of a near­by build­ing and the of­fi­cers im­me­di­ate­ly pro­ceed­ed in the di­rec­tion of the noise. There, they ob­served a man hold­ing a firearm and shoot­ing in­to the air. The of­fi­cers gave chase, but the man es­caped. Sev­er­al apart­ments were searched in at­tempts to lo­cate the gun­man, but they proved fu­tile. Dur­ing the search, 1.3 kilo­grammes of mar­i­jua­na were found hid­den on the rooftop of a build­ing at Dun­can Street Plan­nings," the re­lease stat­ed.

No of­fi­cers were in­jured dur­ing this ex­er­cise.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.