Gen­er­al Elec­tion Day ac­tiv­i­ty was not with­out con­tro­ver­sy.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith de­scribed as reck­less and dan­ger­ous Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) gen­er­al sec­re­tary Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s ac­cu­sa­tion that the po­lice used road­block ex­er­cis­es in Curepe as a tac­tic to frus­trate vot­ers from get­ting to a polling sta­tion in St Au­gus­tine.

The top CoP’s crit­i­cism came af­ter Tan­coo sent a let­ter via email to the CoP in which he stat­ed, “It is clear to us that these sud­den ex­er­cis­es are meant to de­lay vot­ers in that area, and to in­ter­fere with the free and prop­er ex­er­cise of the fran­chise (to vote).”

Tan­coo re­ferred to the ex­er­cise as an abuse of po­lice pow­ers.

But in re­sponse, Grif­fith de­scribed Tan­coo’s let­ter as high­ly of­fen­sive and dan­ger­ous. Grif­fith said he re­ceived the let­ter long af­ter “the whole of Trinidad” had seen a copy of it. He said it was clear “what the in­ten­tion of the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary was.”

Grif­fith ex­plained that what tran­spired at Evans Street, Curepe, was not a planned road­block.

Ac­cord­ing to Grif­fith, “There was reck­less dri­ving tak­ing place in a cer­tain area so the of­fi­cers start­ed to stop ve­hi­cles. A Gen­er­al Elec­tion does not mean that the TTPS is no longer re­quired to ful­fil our oth­er du­ties. So peo­ple must break a red light, or dri­ve on the shoul­der, or over­take in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly be­cause it is Elec­tion Day? That is very ab­surd in­deed.”

He said the po­lice will con­tin­ue to ef­fec­tive­ly dis­charge its du­ties, whether it is Elec­tion Day, Car­ni­val, or Christ­mas.

“We have our nor­mal du­ties to per­form and this shows the reck­less and disin­gen­u­ous com­ments com­ing from the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty.”

Grif­fith said the Cy­cle sec­tion of the TTPS con­ducts ex­er­cise du­ties al­most on a dai­ly ba­sis at var­i­ous lo­ca­tions.

“Our records would show that at least once a week we per­form ex­er­cise du­ties at Evans Street, Curepe, be­cause mo­torists of­ten breach a lot of road traf­fic signs at that lo­ca­tion.”

He said of­fi­cers were man­dat­ed by se­niors to per­form ex­er­cis­es over the week­end, in­clud­ing Elec­tion Day. That ex­er­cise, he said, was done “in good faith and there was no in­ten­tion to dis­rupt the elec­tions.”

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s ex­er­cise, “the of­fi­cers checked ve­hi­cle num­bers, dri­vers per­mit and in­sur­ance.”

Grif­fith said he vis­it­ed the lo­ca­tion dur­ing the day and did not see any line of vot­ers at the said polling sta­tion.

He said the UNC sec­re­tary could be al­lud­ing to po­lit­i­cal bias by the TTPS by de­lib­er­ate­ly not al­low­ing sup­port­ers of one par­ty to vote. But he said he was not aware that in a road­block on Elec­tion Day, the cars are paint­ed red or yel­low so these bi­ased of­fi­cers would know which to stop and which to al­low to pass.