PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The in­di­vid­u­als who at­tend­ed a pool par­ty at Bay­side Tow­ers in Co­corite re­cent­ly are not off the hook just yet, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith said yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing dur­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice press brief­ing yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is still be­ing con­duct­ed in­to the in­ci­dent.

“In this in­ves­ti­ga­tion, if we find out, what we have heard is some of these in­di­vid­u­als were not res­i­dents of Trinidad and To­ba­go, we will check and re­alise whether they have doc­u­men­ta­tion to be here. And even if they do, per­sons can be re­moved from this coun­try if they are deemed (A) a threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty or (B) a li­a­bil­i­ty to the pub­lic purse,” warned Grif­fith, as he de­nied that the group had been let off easy by the TTPS due to their class or eth­nic­i­ty.

Af­ter news of the Bay­side Tow­ers event was re­port­ed, many on so­cial me­dia ques­tioned the rel­a­tive le­nien­cy met­ed out to those in at­ten­dance, in com­par­i­son to the pub­lic em­bar­rass­ment ex­pe­ri­enced by Sea Lots res­i­dents and oth­ers ar­rest­ed at a par­ty in St James last month. In the for­mer in­ci­dent, Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith him­self had sev­er­al teenagers apol­o­gise to him, af­ter they record­ed a so­cial me­dia video hurl­ing ex­ple­tives at the Com­mis­sion­er while sea-bathing. In the lat­ter, the TTPS pub­lished im­ages of the par­ty­go­ers af­ter stop­ping a “Zess­er” fete. And dur­ing the first phase of the COVID pan­dem­ic, po­lice al­so raid­ed a guest house in St Ann’s on April 19 and ar­rest­ed and charged per­sons who were at­tend­ing a par­ty there for breach­ing the health or­di­nance as it re­lat­ed to pub­lic gath­er­ings.

Some of the partygoers at the Bayside Towers fete pose for a photo.

Grif­fith made ref­er­ence to the Sea Lots in­ci­dent, re­mind­ing that those teenagers were not ar­rest­ed.

“They are say­ing all of these in­di­vid­u­als should all have been ar­rest­ed be­cause they were held but there was a cer­tain Gary Grif­fith that they were 27 per­sons that I held in Sea Lots and I warned them and they were let go and that was not a prob­lem then. Just about a month and a half ago, 17 per­sons were swim­ming at the bay next to Bay­side, from Sea Lots to Care­nage and St James and none of them were ar­rest­ed and that was not an is­sue,” he said.

He al­so re­mind­ed of the raid on the guest house where a COVID sex par­ty was tak­ing place.

“So again, you can’t have a pri­vate prop­er­ty where you have a cov­er charge, it not on­ly be­comes a pub­lic place, a pub­lic space. So you can’t have an open house where you have al­co­hol be­ing sold, con­sumed and the lev­el of the noise, per­sons pay­ing a cov­er charge, it no longer be­comes a pri­vate prop­er­ty be­cause you’re ac­tu­al­ly charg­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic to en­ter.

“If you have your pri­vate prop­er­ty where you have in­vit­ed in­di­vid­u­als, it can make it dif­fi­cult. I do not want this to be used as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for in­di­vid­u­als, for per­sons to say ah-ha, so that is what we can do. This is where com­mon sense and ma­tu­ri­ty needs to step in for per­sons to un­der­stand the big­ger pic­ture.”

Grif­fith, how­ev­er, ex­plained that there was some am­bi­gu­i­ty con­cern­ing the po­lice’s abil­i­ty to act on so­cial gath­er­ings at pri­vate premis­es.

“The law is pub­lic place, so if you have your home and pri­vate prop­er­ty the po­lice have to be very care­ful. So in this sit­u­a­tion, this was a gat­ed com­mu­ni­ty and my point is, sup­pose 20 per­sons in a gat­ed com­mu­ni­ty all de­cide to go to the pool at the same time, is the po­lice sup­posed to clear the first five who ar­rive and ar­rest the oth­er 15? It is very dif­fi­cult in this sit­u­a­tion, which is why it is Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh and oth­ers have stat­ed peo­ple need to be pro­fes­sion­al, ma­ture,” Grif­fith said.

Ear­li­er in the day, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh sim­i­lar­ly point­ed out this grey area in the law dur­ing the Min­istry of Health vir­tu­al press brief­ing and said he would con­sult the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al con­cern­ing what ad­just­ments can be made.

How­ev­er, Grif­fith said the pub­lic should not hold pri­vate par­ties be­cause of the un­cer­tain­ty con­cern­ing the po­lice’s reach in such mat­ters.

“I would ad­vise us, let us not go down that road, if peo­ple are try­ing to abuse the po­si­tion that the po­lice would be placed in, it is go­ing to de­feat all that good that is be­ing done by the laws,” he said.

“This is where com­mon sense kicks in, which is again go­ing back to the sit­u­a­tion with the land­lord. The land­lord was try­ing to per­suade the in­di­vid­ual or in­di­vid­u­als who threw the par­ty, they did not lis­ten, so they brought in the po­lice. The po­lice, we can’t abuse our au­thor­i­ty, I have to be very clear and ad­here to the law.”

He that there were oth­er meth­ods po­lice could use to nab those look­ing to par­ty.