The Pe­nal Po­lice Sta­tion was locked down yes­ter­day af­ter of­fi­cers ar­rest­ed a man who de­fied a doc­tor’s rec­om­men­da­tion to self-quar­an­tine him­self and con­tact the COVID-19 hot­line.
Sev­er­al of­fi­cers on yes­ter­day’s day shift were or­dered to show­er and change their clothes as they await­ed fur­ther in­struc­tions from health of­fi­cials up to late last evening. How­ev­er, DCP Jayson Forde last night said the sit­u­a­tion was dealt with and the sta­tion re­opened with no dan­ger to of­fi­cers and the pub­lic. 
Guardian Me­dia learned that the Pe­nal man went to the Siparia Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty with flu-like symp­toms on Wednes­day. He was told to re­turn home, iso­late him­self and con­tact the hot­line for a pos­si­ble test for COVID-19. 
In­stead, he spent the night drink­ing al­co­hol with his neigh­bour. Yes­ter­day morn­ing, of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to a re­port of a breach of a pro­tec­tion or­der af­ter the man al­leged­ly went to his sis­ter’s home and threat­ened her with a knife. He was ar­rest­ed and while be­ing in­ter­viewed at the sta­tion, he be­gan cough­ing. It was then he in­formed of­fi­cers of the doc­tor’s or­der.
The of­fi­cers con­tact­ed the health fa­cil­i­ty, where staff con­firmed the man's sto­ry. They then con­tact­ed se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials who ini­ti­at­ed a lock­down.
Forde said the of­fi­cers met with the Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health and com­plied with the guide­lines giv­en. They were al­lowed to leave the po­lice sta­tion. The ill man was tak­en for med­ical care.
Forde said the man did not go through the en­tire sta­tion and based on the ad­vice of med­ical ex­perts, the area he was be­ing held in was locked off and will be sani­tised.
While the po­lice sta­tion con­tin­ues to op­er­ate, Forde said any­one who wants to re­port an in­ci­dent to any po­lice sta­tion can call the many num­bers to avoid go­ing out­doors or use the po­lice ser­vice app. The of­fi­cers will then de­ter­mine whether a phys­i­cal pres­ence is need­ed at the sta­tion.
Yes­ter­day’s in­ci­dent was the sec­ond COVID-19 scare for the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice. On March 26, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith or­dered the clo­sure of the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion af­ter an of­fi­cer with re­cent trav­el his­to­ry de­vel­oped flu-like symp­toms.
Grif­fith said the of­fi­cer trav­elled to St Maarten on March 4 with­out ap­proval and re­turned on March 7. In­stead of go­ing in­to self-quar­an­tine, he re­turned to work the fol­low­ing day. The of­fi­cer in ques­tion was sub­se­quent­ly test­ed and the re­sult was neg­a­tive.