Thir­ty-two po­lice re­cruits at­tached to the Po­lice Acad­e­my in St James have test­ed pos­i­tive Covid-19.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice of­fi­cials, one of the re­cruits test­ed pos­i­tive on Au­gust 25th, and an­oth­er three days lat­er.

As a pre­cau­tion, an­oth­er 42 who were in di­rect con­tact with the two re­cruits, were im­me­di­ate­ly sep­a­rat­ed and sent to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, and away from the oth­er 143 re­cruits at the Acad­e­my.

Tests were con­duct­ed on the 42 re­cruits, with 32 re­turn­ing pos­i­tive and the oth­er ten, neg­a­tive. As a re­sult, the 32 who test­ed pos­i­tive have been re­moved to an­oth­er part of the UWI cam­pus, while the oth­er ten re­main in quar­an­tine.

The re­main­ing 143 re­cruits who are in train­ing, as well as the in­struc­tors and oth­er per­sons at the Acad­e­my, will al­so be test­ed. As a re­sult, the pro­posed grad­u­a­tion on Sep­tem­ber 16th, and pass­ing out of this batch of re­cruits sev­en days lat­er, have been post­poned in­def­i­nite­ly.

The TTPS, like many oth­er front-line agen­cies, has been af­fect­ed by the Covid-19 virus. Sev­er­al po­lice sta­tions, in­clud­ing the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, had to be closed on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions to be san­i­tized af­ter po­lice of­fi­cers con­tract­ed the virus.

Sev­er­al sec­tions, branch­es, and units, were closed as the virus con­tin­ue to af­fect po­lice of­fi­cers and civil­ian staff. As a re­sult, the TTPS has had to stop cer­tain ser­vices, such as Cer­tifi­cate of Char­ac­ter and Firearms ap­pli­ca­tions.

All nec­es­sary pro­to­cols are in place for the safe­ty of these of­fi­cers.

De­spite the threat of Covid, po­lice of­fi­cers con­tin­ue to car­ry out all du­ties, in­clud­ing road ex­er­cis­es and raids.