Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob is warn­ing those who wish to de­lib­er­ate­ly vi­o­late the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) will en­force the law.

“We in­tend to en­force the law in an ag­gres­sive man­ner. Once per­sons have not been grant­ed per­mis­sion, the po­lice of­fi­cers will make the nec­es­sary ar­rests and the ques­tion of dis­cre­tions will be left to the court. They will feel the full brunt of the law. We will move around with our bus­es and will make ar­rests,” Ja­cob told the Sun­day Guardian by phone yes­ter­day.

He said since the pan­dem­ic start­ed, the TTPS had is­sued 21,254 fixed penal­ty tick­ets to peo­ple who have vi­o­lat­ed the COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions, in­clud­ing for not wear­ing face masks. He said be­tween 6 am on Fri­day and 6 am yes­ter­day alone, the TTPS is­sued 100 fixed penal­ty tick­ets.

Ja­cob said since the Safe Zone ini­tia­tive start­ed, the TTPS had is­sued 153 fixed penal­ty tick­ets to in­di­vid­u­als for vi­o­la­tions of the zones and five times to busi­ness own­ers.

He al­so said it was al­so un­for­tu­nate that since the State of Emer­gency (SoE) was lift­ed last month, cit­i­zens’ be­hav­iour had changed.

“Re­cent­ly, we have seen an in­crease in the num­ber of per­sons vi­o­lat­ing the COVID-19 rules since the SoE lift­ed. Per­sons are con­stant­ly bent on cre­at­ing all dif­fer­ent mea­sures to cause un­nec­es­sary gath­er­ings. A lot of them are po­lit­i­cal­ly-dri­ven events where there are small groups ac­tu­al­ly con­verg­ing to­geth­er to cre­ate dif­fi­cul­ties for the po­lice. An ex­am­ple is what hap­pened at the Sa­van­nah re­cent­ly,” he said about the re­cent protest against Gov­ern­ment’s COVID poli­cies, where 30-plus peo­ple were ar­rest­ed.

He said un­ruly cit­i­zens are plac­ing the lives of the po­lice at risk when they go to break up these events, not­ing of­fi­cers are in dan­ger of con­tract­ing the virus.

“At present, the TTPS has 634 po­lice of­fi­cers on quar­an­tine, with 148 po­lice of­fi­cers who have test­ed pos­i­tive in re­cent times. We have 17 po­lice of­fi­cers who are now de­ceased. In some in­stances, the po­lice have to go in­to ac­tion and in­sti­tute ar­rests of in­di­vid­u­als who choose to vi­o­late the reg­u­la­tions. We be­lieve in some of these sit­u­a­tions the po­lice of­fi­cers may be un­for­tu­nate­ly af­fect­ed with COVID-19.”

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh al­so yes­ter­day warned the pub­lic about large gath­er­ings that vi­o­late the Pub­lic Health guide­lines and reg­u­la­tions, as he re­spond­ed to pub­lic com­plaints about a pro­mo­tion­al mo­tor­cade by An­gos­tu­ra on Fri­day.

Asked whether a mo­tor­cade in­volv­ing women on trucks and mu­sic was send­ing the wrong mes­sage dur­ing a third wave of the pan­dem­ic, Deyals­ingh said, “There is some­thing called the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions. We just ask all per­sons, whether it is cor­po­rate or in­di­vid­ual…what I did see is what hap­pened in the Sa­van­nah. It was very dis­con­cert­ing. It is about any type of gath­er­ing, even if it is your homes, any type of gath­er­ing at this time is some­thing that we should think twice or three times about. Whether it is a protest as we saw in the sa­van­nah and peo­ple en­cour­ag­ing their chil­dren not to wear masks. I am just hop­ing that gath­er­ing in the Sa­van­nah does not re­sult in a spike.”

An­gos­tu­ra re­sponds

In a state­ment to the Sun­day Guardian, An­gos­tu­ra said that on Fri­day (De­cem­ber 3) and yes­ter­day (De­cem­ber 4), the An­gos­tu­ra Rule the Road Car­a­van par­tic­i­pat­ed in is­land­wide pro­mo­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ties in sev­er­al parts of Trinidad.

An­gos­tu­ra said in keep­ing with COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions, the car­a­van, which con­sist­ed of mu­sic trucks, trail­ers and a tow truck dis­play­ing the all-new Jeep Ru­bi­con prize, did not al­low gath­er­ings or in­ter­ac­tions. An­gos­tu­ra used the car­a­van as part of its roll-out for its new pack­ag­ing project for White Oak, new prod­uct cam­paigns and the Jeep pro­mo­tions this month. It said in pre­vi­ous years, these events in­volved bar stops, live per­for­mances and invit­ing per­sons to par­tic­i­pate in the trail­er ac­tiv­i­ties.

“This year, none of that hap­pened be­cause the com­pa­ny un­der­stands that this is the new nor­mal and while busi­ness must con­tin­ue, we must bal­ance lives and liveli­hoods. All our ac­tiv­i­ties and ac­ti­va­tions are now done through the lens of safe­ty. In ad­di­tion to our an­nounc­ers and mes­sages, we en­closed the trail­ers with plex­i­glass to avoid and dis­cour­age any in­ter­ac­tion with our pro­mo teams, there­by al­so keep­ing the pub­lic safe.”

An­gos­tu­ra added that all their trail­ers were equipped with elec­tron­ic boards which al­so prompt­ed mes­sages of safe­ty - re­in­forc­ing the need to stay safe, the need to vac­ci­nate and to wear masks.

“We took the com­mu­ni­ca­tion one step fur­ther to­day (Sat­ur­day), with our an­nounc­ers ask­ing per­sons to go to mass vac­ci­na­tion sites which are open to the pop­u­la­tion and get vac­ci­nat­ed which is a re­spon­si­ble cor­po­rate con­cern for the coun­try.”