PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has come to the de­fence of the Po­lice Ser­vice and him­self af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley called for the ar­rests of all who were found to be par­ty­ing.

He is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to amend the cur­rent laws as it ap­plies to po­lice re­spond­ing to events held on pri­vate prop­er­ties.

Dr Row­ley stat­ed that the law should be ap­plied across the board dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day, as he joined the on­go­ing com­men­tary on the re­cent Bay­side Tow­ers pool par­ty. 

Fol­low­ing the Bay­side event, sev­er­al ex­pressed the be­lief that the po­lice had giv­en pref­er­en­tial treat­ment to the group by not ar­rest­ing or fin­ing those in­volved but rather is­su­ing two warn­ings.

“We ex­pect that the law will be ap­plied to every per­son re­gard­less of race, colour, creed, class or so­cial stand­ing,” said Dr Row­ley.

Grif­fith re­spond­ed to the prime min­is­ter via a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day in which he ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that, in his view, the Po­lice Ser­vice had been “thrown un­der the prover­bial bus.”

“The TTPS stands ready and com­mit­ted to en­force ALL laws passed by the Gov­ern­ment, how­ev­er, we must be wary of sim­ply re­spond­ing to pub­lic or po­lit­i­cal pres­sure es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lates to po­ten­tial­ly abus­ing the rights of in­di­vid­u­als and/or act­ing il­le­gal­ly in a quest to sat­is­fy pub­lic or po­lit­i­cal pres­sure. The  sim­ple  ques­tion  be­fore the TTPS is can we en­ter pri­vate prop­er­ty with­out  a war­rant and charge per­sons for com­mit­ting vi­o­la­tions of the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance sim­ply be­cause they num­ber more than five?”

Grif­fith said fur­ther, “We have sought and re­ceived sev­er­al le­gal opin­ions on this and are in­deed com­fort­able with our cur­rent in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the law and there­fore our re­sponse to the mat­ter at hand. The law as cur­rent­ly con­struct­ed does NOT di­min­ish a per­son’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights as a whole and in par­tic­u­lar, their rights to en­joy prop­er­ty. This makes for a dif­fi­cult judge­ment call on the part of the TTPS.”  

Grif­fith point­ed to sim­i­lar warn­ings giv­en dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign when po­lit­i­cal par­ties con­stant­ly had gath­er­ings which then ex­ceed­ed the lim­it of 10 per group, say­ing that ex­cept in those cas­es there was no am­bi­gu­i­ty as those events had oc­curred in pub­lic spaces. 

“We did then what we did in Bay­side; cau­tion per­sons!  Is the is­sue with this Bay­side mat­ter the num­ber of peo­ple, or the fact it was a par­ty, or the fact it was on so­cial me­dia, or the fact that they are per­ceived as rich?  As the TTPS, we re­spond to breach­es of the  Pub­lic  Health Or­di­nance. We don’t re­spond to per­cep­tions of race, creed, or class.”

He added, “The sug­ges­tion that some­how per­sons at one lo­ca­tion have got­ten priv­i­leges that oth­ers haven’t got­ten is ridicu­lous,  mis­in­formed, and dan­ger­ous, and on­ly in­flames an al­ready del­i­cate sit­u­a­tion. The so­lu­tion to this mat­ter lies in the hands of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and not the Po­lice. If the GORTT wish­es to have en­force­ment of the reg­u­la­tions on pri­vate prop­er­ty and in­side per­sons homes, they need to amend the leg­is­la­tion or pro­vide new leg­is­la­tion  that would al­low the po­lice clear and un­am­bigu­ous au­thor­i­ty to do what the Prime Min­is­ter has in­sin­u­at­ed should be done.”

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al al­so sided with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice’s stance that an ad­just­ment to the law would be re­quired for the po­lice to act, and agreed that the TTPS had been thrown un­der the bus by the Prime Min­is­ter.

Lutch­me­di­al said, “The Gov­ern­ment de­mands that the po­lice ex­er­cise pow­ers they sim­ply do not have and which they have failed to take the nec­es­sary steps to give. It is clear that the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter is not be­ing prop­er­ly ad­vised by his At­tor­ney Gen­er­al re­gard­ing what the po­lice can and can­not do un­der the ex­ist­ing Reg­u­la­tions im­ple­ment­ed by his Min­is­ter of Health.”

She said the leg­is­la­tion would have to re­turn to the Par­lia­ment to flesh out a law to avoid such oc­cur­rences.

“You can­not give the TTPS a cork to plug one of sev­er­al holes and then blame them be­cause the ship is still sink­ing. Give them the nec­es­sary tools to help keep the ship afloat,” she said.  

Ear­li­er in the week an­oth­er UNC MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly ar­gued that the Bay­side in­ci­dent was not an in­stance of pref­er­en­tial treat­ment, but a case of am­bi­gu­i­ty un­der the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tion.

Grif­fith writes of­fi­cers

Mean­while, Guardian Me­dia has re­ceived a copy of a pri­vate doc­u­ment which Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith sent to all Heads of Di­vi­sions telling of­fi­cers to ad­here to their oaths and main­tain the law. When con­tact­ed, Grif­fith con­firmed the doc­u­ment was sent out to of­fi­cers. It stat­ed:

“In re­la­tion to the PM’s mis­lead­ing per­cep­tion and try­ing to throw the po­lice un­der the bus due to his fail­ure to draft laws giv­ing po­lice au­thor­i­ty to charge per­sons for breach of Health Regs in pri­vate prop­er­ty, please ad­vise all Of­fi­cers to ad­here to their oath and en­force laws. A press con­fer­ence can­not en­act a law. We can take the easy way out and lis­ten to him and start ar­rest­ing any house with more than 5 vis­i­tors. But we are pro­fes­sion­al. Let us ad­here to en­forc­ing the law. All we can do if there is mass as­sem­bly in pri­vate prop­er­ty is to ad­vise, warn and dis­perse. We ar­rest and the State pays for wrong­ful ar­rest.”