Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

 Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith has launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to why po­lice of­fi­cers from the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion failed to stop a T10 crick­et match that had over 1,000 spec­ta­tors on Wednes­day, al­though this was clear­ly in breach of the COVID-19 Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance Reg­u­la­tions guide­lines.

Iron­i­cal­ly, a po­lice rep­re­sen­ta­tive team was play­ing Ex­pert All Stars in a semi­fi­nal of the Cen­tral Su­per League (CSL) at the time. When the match was stopped, the po­lice team, in re­ply to Ex­pert All Stars’ 106/6 in their 10 overs, were 21 for the loss of two wick­ets.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said it was on­ly when he gave in­struc­tions for the match to be shut down that the of­fi­cers on the scene made an at­tempt to dis­perse the crowd which had as­sem­bled. 

“The large crowd breached the COVID-19 pro­to­cols and caused a traf­fic night­mare along Pierre Road, Char­lieville,” Grif­fith said in the re­lease.

He not­ed that dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion can fol­low if the in­ves­ti­ga­tion shows that po­lice of­fi­cers did not car­ry out their du­ties.

Grif­fith said when he re­ceived a re­port that there were breach­es of the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions, he in­struct­ed the Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent in charge of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion to shut down the event.

“Al­though there were of­fi­cers present through­out the match, it was on­ly when they re­ceived in­struc­tions that the po­lice of­fi­cers went on­to the field and stopped the match. The large crowd be­gan to dis­perse sub­se­quent­ly. A rep­re­sen­ta­tive team from the TTPS was en­gaged in a se­mi-fi­nal match in the Cen­tral T10 tour­na­ment at that time.”

The CoP re­it­er­at­ed that “there must be no spec­ta­tors at team sports dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.”

Grif­fith said with the large crowd present, there was clear­ly a breach of the Pub­lic Health (2019 Nov­el Coro­n­avirus (2019- nCOV) Reg­u­la­tions, 2020. 

The Reg­u­la­tions states: “Dur­ing the pe­ri­od spec­i­fied in Reg­u­la­tion 16, a per­son shall not, with­out rea­son­able jus­ti­fi­ca­tion– (a) be found at any pub­lic place where the num­ber of per­sons gath­ered at any time ex­ceeds ten; (b) par­tic­i­pate in any sport or team sports which in­volves the con­gre­ga­tion of more than ten per­sons; or (c) be found at or in any beach, riv­er, stream, pond, spring or sim­i­lar body of wa­ter in con­gre­ga­tions of more than ten per­sons.”

Mean­while the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board of Con­trol (TTCB) yes­ter­day dis­tance it­self from the event, say­ing it was a pri­vate com­pe­ti­tion. Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, TTCB sec­re­tary Su­ruj Ma­habir said no per­mis­sion was sought from the TTCB for the com­pe­ti­tion at Pierre Road.

“Al­so, since the re­cent up­surge in COVID cas­es, both TTCB and SS­CL have ad­vised against large groups train­ing/prac­tice, games and/or com­pe­ti­tions,” Ma­habir said.