PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The Sat­ur­day night crowd at Movi­eTowne in Port-of-Spain was not the on­ly wor­ri­some gath­er­ing over the week­end, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith said yes­ter­day.

Po­lice of­fi­cers had to be called to the pop­u­lar venue on Sat­ur­day af­ter pho­tos sur­faced on so­cial me­dia of scores of peo­ple lim­ing out­side the cine­plex.

In a phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, how­ev­er, Grif­fith con­firmed that Movi­eTowne’s crowd was one of three mass gath­er­ings his of­fi­cers had to dis­perse on Sat­ur­day evening.

“Movi­eTowne was not the on­ly area, we had sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions at Heart­land Plaza, at Grand Bazaar, where it would have sit­u­a­tions where there were mass gath­er­ings of per­sons at one spe­cif­ic place,” Grif­fith said.

“We an­tic­i­pate sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions dur­ing the East­er week­end with peo­ple try­ing to con­gre­gate in spe­cif­ic ar­eas and again, it makes it very dif­fi­cult for the po­lice to try to main­tain and to en­sure that per­sons ad­here to the reg­u­la­tions when you have that amount of per­sons in one spe­cif­ic place.”

Grif­fith ex­plained that the Movi­eTowne sit­u­a­tion was com­pli­cat­ed by the fact that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple gath­ered out­side the cine­plex and shop­ping mall. He dis­pelled claims, how­ev­er, that the crowd may have been linked to the open­ing of one block­buster movie.

“I think the big­ger prob­lem ex­ist­ed with the vast num­ber of per­sons who were not go­ing in to watch a movie that af­ter­noon. We got nu­mer­ous re­ports of mi­nors who were ac­tu­al­ly dropped off by their par­ents,” he said.

“When the po­lice were try­ing to dis­perse the crowd, the vast ma­jor­i­ty were mi­nors who said they had nowhere to go be­cause their par­ents dropped them off.”

The oth­er gath­er­ings, Grif­fith con­firmed, were adults con­verg­ing at the shop­ping malls or near to them.

“We had re­ports of planned car shows and things that cause adults to con­verge. Well ob­vi­ous­ly there would have been some mi­nors as well but there­in lies the prob­lem,” said Grif­fith, who not­ed the gath­er­ings at these lo­ca­tions flew in the face of the warn­ing is­sued by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley mere hours ear­li­er.

“It ob­vi­ous­ly took a lot of strain on the po­lice ser­vice that evening. We had five emer­gency re­sponse pa­trol ve­hi­cles go­ing there on a con­tin­u­ous ba­sis try­ing to dis­perse the crowd. This was in to­tal con­trast to the rec­om­men­da­tion and re­quest made by the chair of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, the Prime Min­is­ter, when he asked per­sons to try to be re­spon­si­ble.”

He was re­fer­ring to Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley’s call to the pub­lic to ex­er­cise greater dis­ci­pline in fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pro­to­cols in the wake of a re­cent resur­gence in cas­es. Row­ley made the ap­peal dur­ing the COVID-19 me­dia brief­ing on Sat­ur­day, where Min­istry of health of­fi­cials re­vealed that the coun­ty of Vic­to­ria had been the lat­est area iden­ti­fied as a hotspot, with ac­tiv­i­ty in Pe­nal, in par­tic­u­lar, caus­ing con­cern. Coun­ty Ca­roni had al­so pre­vi­ous­ly been high­light­ed as a new trou­ble spot for a spike in cas­es.

Yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said while the TTPS was aware that many peo­ple were frus­trat­ed and look­ing for some kind of out­let af­ter a year of COVID-19-re­lat­ed re­stric­tions, there was still a need for per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. He al­so made a call for the pub­lic to recog­nise that their ac­tions might con­tribute to a large gath­er­ing in a pub­lic space.

“I said it is not spe­cif­ic be­cause of peo­ple go­ing to the movies but chil­dren just want­i­ng to so­cialise, peo­ple be­ing frus­trat­ed, but every­one can­not de­cide to so­cialise and be frus­trat­ed at the same time and the same place. So it is hoped that af­ter the sit­u­a­tion in Movi­eTowne, es­pe­cial­ly par­ents, they need to un­der­stand I may be drop­ping my child but he or she may con­tribute to a sit­u­a­tion that is very dif­fi­cult for the po­lice to con­trol,” he said.

He said it was this type of ac­tiv­i­ty that prompt­ed his de­ci­sion to stop grant­i­ng per­mis­sion for vig­ils and protests, as he ex­plained that these events pro­mot­ed large gath­er­ings which ul­ti­mate­ly are con­trary to Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions cur­rent­ly be­ing en­forced.

“It seems to be a tem­plate of a road march line—we in­tend to ad­here to all the COVID pro­to­cols. But you say that yet you ex­pect and an­tic­i­pate hun­dreds to at­tend, so you can­not be ad­her­ing to all the COVID pro­to­cols if you are ful­ly aware that there will be more than ten per­sons that will be as­sem­bled. That is why I had to put an end to it be­cause it was get­ting to­tal­ly out of hand,” Grif­fith said.

“We reach a sit­u­a­tion where per­sons need to un­der­stand that per­sons con­verg­ing en masse is what may very well be caus­ing the num­bers to es­ca­late.”