Fol­low­ing the vis­it to El Pecos on Ari­api­a­ta Av­enue ear­li­er to­day, the Po­lice Ser­vice is­sued the fol­low­ing state­ment:

"Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Gary Grif­fith, wish­es to in­form the pub­lic that of­fi­cers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) vis­it­ed the premis­es of El Pecos Mar­ket Place, Ari­api­ta Av­enue, Wood­brook, this af­ter­noon fol­low­ing a re­port re­ceived from the pub­lic health of­fi­cials of the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion.

But when the po­lice of­fi­cers ar­rived at the lo­ca­tion, the place was al­ready closed to the pub­lic, but there were cus­tomers and staff in­side the build­ing.

The TTPS re­spond­ed to a re­port from the pub­lic health of­fi­cials who paid a vis­it ear­li­er in the day and made cer­tain ob­ser­va­tions.

As a re­sult of the re­port, a team of of­fi­cers from the TTPS, Port-of-Spain City Po­lice, and the pub­lic health de­part­ment, un­der ACP Yusuf Gaf­far, Se­nior Supt Kelvern Thomp­son, Supt Ar­lene George, and Supt Baird, vis­it­ed El Pecos and in­formed the own­er of the busi­ness of the re­port.

The po­lice of­fi­cers con­duct­ed pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions to de­ter­mine if there was any breach of the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions and the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions 2021.

State­ments were record­ed and items of ev­i­den­tial val­ue were pho­tographed. The own­er was al­so ad­vised about the con­gre­ga­tion out­side El Pecos by mem­bers of the pub­lic around mid­day to­day.

The CoP ad­vis­es mem­bers of the pub­lic of Sec­tion 133 of the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance, Chap­ter 12 No. 4 and Emer­gency Pow­er Reg­u­la­tions, 2021 which state the fol­low­ing:

Sec­tion 133 of the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance

For the pur­pos­es of this Part of this Or­di­nance, any per­son au­tho­rized to act un­der the pro­vi­sions here­of or of any reg­u­la­tion made in pur­suance of any au­thor­i­ty con­tained in this Part of this Or­di­nance may, at any time, with or with­out as­sis­tance:

(c) gen­er­al­ly do, with re­spect to per­sons, places, land, build­ings, an­i­mals, or things what­ev­er is nec­es­sary or ex­pe­di­ent in or­der to car­ry out the fore­go­ing pro­vi­sions of this Part of this Or­di­nance or any di­rec­tion or re­quire­ment giv­en or aris­ing there­un­der.

Reg­u­la­tion 6(1)(c) of the Emer­gency Pow­er Reg­u­la­tions

The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice or a per­son au­tho­rized by him in that re­gard, may for the pur­pos­es of en­sur­ing the pro­tec­tion of pub­lic health, pub­lic safe­ty or to pub­lic or­der–

(c) re­quire any per­son to quit any place or area or not to vis­it any place or area.

The CoP al­so re­minds per­sons that they must so­cial dis­tance and wear their masks when ac­cess­ing es­sen­tial ser­vices and to avoid as­sem­bling in pub­lic, wher­ev­er pos­si­ble.

More­over, he urges cit­i­zens to be­have in a re­spon­si­ble man­ner to min­imise the ex­po­sure and spread of the Covid-19 virus.

Fur­ther to the above, whilst po­lice of­fi­cers may not be able to ar­rest every cit­i­zen not ob­serv­ing the so­cial dis­tanc­ing pol­i­cy, or ex­ceed­ing the pre­scribed num­bers in pub­lic gath­er­ings (five), it would be more prac­ti­cal and pru­dent to re­quire the clo­sure of these dif­fer­ent in­sti­tu­tions which ap­pear not to have pro­vid­ed the prop­er safe­ty mech­a­nisms to be ob­served by per­sons wait­ing to ac­cess these busi­ness­es."