“Stay home or I will make your life very un­com­fort­able.”

This was the warn­ing is­sued by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith on Sat­ur­day, as he urged cit­i­zens to ad­here to the reg­u­la­tions set out in the Pub­lic Or­di­nance Act un­der the Stay-at-Home or­der cur­rent­ly in ef­fect across T&T.

While ad­mit­ting there is no cur­few in place lim­it­ing one’s move­ments, Grif­fith urged peo­ple to lis­ten to the au­thor­i­ties re­gard­ing non-es­sen­tial trav­el to stem the spread of COVID-19.

Say­ing he has a few op­tions which he is not afraid to use to com­pel peo­ple to re­main at home, Grif­fith as­sured that any ac­tion they em­bark up­on will be with­in le­gal pa­ra­me­ters.

How­ev­er, he sig­nalled to the pop­u­la­tion, “If you are not an em­ploy­ee of an es­sen­tial busi­ness and you are not go­ing to utilise an es­sen­tial good or ser­vice, stay home to avoid all com­pli­ca­tions.”

Asked if the po­lice could charge peo­ple for breach­ing these reg­u­la­tions, Grif­fith said there were sev­er­al laws un­der which he could act.

He re­mind­ed, “There were peo­ple who felt the po­lice did not have the au­thor­i­ty to do any­thing to break up COVID-19 par­ties by per­sons do­ing what­ev­er they want­ed on their pri­vate prop­er­ty, and I had to ex­plain that the pow­ers that peo­ple did not think I have, I do have it and I would use it.”

He said it was a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion when he ad­vised the TTPS had the au­thor­i­ty to shut down su­per­mar­kets and banks if peo­ple did not ad­here to the so­cial dis­tanc­ing pro­to­cols.

“There are cer­tain laws that I will just have to dust off as they are on the shelf, but there are laws I can and will use if it is re­quired to en­sure my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to main­tain law and or­der and en­sure per­sons ad­here to the poli­cies as dic­tat­ed by the Gov­ern­ment per­tain­ing to COVID-19,” he said.

Un­der Sec­tion 133 of the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance, Grif­fith can or­der the clo­sure of a par­tic­u­lar busi­ness if peo­ple out­side them fail to ad­here to the pro­to­cols out­lined.

Re­fer­ring to the traf­fic con­ges­tion on the na­tion’s roads be­tween Wednes­day and Fri­day last week, Grif­fith said this was ev­i­dence of a re­lax­ing of per­son­al re­stric­tions by cit­i­zens.

On Fri­day, of­fi­cers con­duct­ed sev­er­al road ex­er­cis­es and stopped 5,525 ve­hi­cles which were oc­cu­pied by some 9,825 peo­ple. Scores of those peo­ple were turned back af­ter ex­cus­es such as go­ing to sell a dog or go­ing to meet a sig­nif­i­cant oth­er.

Grif­fith said from 2 pm on Fri­day there was a 90 per cent re­duc­tion in traf­fic in com­par­i­son to the same pe­ri­od of the pre­vi­ous week, which means that per­sons can ad­here to the mea­sure. He said be­tween Tues­day to Thurs­day last week, how­ev­er, “it was al­most like things were back to nor­mal where every­body was back out on the streets.”

“I would put sys­tems in place and that can make things very dif­fi­cult for per­sons,” he re­it­er­at­ed.

“There would be con­tin­u­ous road­blocks. You would not know when it is go­ing to hap­pen, so to avoid you be­ing in­con­ve­nienced and prob­a­bly hav­ing to turn back, be­ing thor­ough­ly ques­tioned and in­ter­ro­gat­ed by the po­lice as they have the au­thor­i­ty to do…to avoid all of that hap­pen­ing, stay home.”

He made it clear he was not re­fer­ring to peo­ple who had ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances.

“The vast ma­jor­i­ty of cars on the road is be­cause of per­sons drop­ping the ball, be­com­ing com­pla­cent and not ad­her­ing to their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, so I will give them the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty by force, by en­forc­ing what is with­in my au­thor­i­ty as the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice,” he said, not­ing Fri­day’s ac­tion was to re­in­force the call for per­sons to stay at home.

Mov­ing for­ward, he added, “You will be asked to jus­ti­fy be­ing out and I would have av­enues that could make it very un­com­fort­able for in­di­vid­u­als, don’t do it. Every­thing I am do­ing is with­in the law.”