Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith says cit­i­zens who choose to flaunt the Gov­ern­ment’s Stay-at-Home or­ders and go on­to the na­tion’s road if they are not es­sen­tial work­ers or go­ing on es­sen­tial busi­ness will have to pre­pare them­selves to be caught up in dai­ly road­blocks by po­lice.

This warn­ing came yes­ter­day, even as his of­fi­cers caught thou­sands of mo­torists in road­blocks set up across the coun­try. The ac­tion caused traf­fic grid­locks for hours through­out the day as the of­fi­cers did not let up on the road­blocks un­til late evening.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Grif­fith said the is­land­wide road­blocks that caused the traf­fic jams were set to be­come a dai­ly rou­tine, as he said over the past 72 hours the pub­lic had got­ten com­pla­cent about the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nances in place to stop the spread of COVID-19.

He said po­lice have been mon­i­tor­ing traf­fic on the na­tion’s road through their Com­mand Cen­tre since Gov­ern­ment had or­dered non-es­sen­tial busi­ness­es closed and non-es­sen­tial work­ers to stay home.

The trend, Grif­fith said, was light traf­fic be­tween 6 am and 6 pm and most­ly clear roads be­tween 6 pm to 6 am.

“What we have seen, how­ev­er, over the last 72 hours, there has been a great in­crease in traf­fic and it is ob­vi­ous it is not be­cause of per­sons who may be deemed as em­ploy­ees in es­sen­tial busi­ness­es or per­sons who are go­ing to ac­quire goods and ser­vices from these es­sen­tial ser­vices. It means that per­sons who are not any of those two are now start­ing to go along the road­ways, so it means ob­vi­ous­ly that per­sons are start­ing to be­come very com­pla­cent,” Grif­fith said. 

He said the change in pat­tern on the road­ways led to the en­force­ment of the Gov­ern­ment’s or­ders in a way that left many cit­i­zens ques­tion­ing whether it was a re­peat of the Ju­ly 2019 ‘Day of To­tal Polic­ing.’ Back then, there was al­so traf­fic grid­lock across the coun­try as po­lice con­duct­ed road­blocks at var­i­ous lo­ca­tions.

But with the Po­lice Ser­vice on Or­ange Alert, Grif­fith yes­ter­day the lat­est ex­er­cis­es may be­come the new nor­mal if cit­i­zens fail to ad­here to re­peat­ed calls to stay at home. 

“The more they stay on the street, the longer there would be traf­fic con­ges­tion at times. I would state this is go­ing to be quite a long while. We in­tend to in­ten­si­fy these road­blocks through­out the coun­try, so if you go out there it is pos­si­ble you can re­main in traf­fic for sev­er­al hours. So to avoid that, stay at home,” Grif­fith said. 

He said es­sen­tial work­ers, many of whom yes­ter­day com­plained bit­ter­ly on so­cial me­dia about be­ing made late for work by the grid­lock, will be al­lowed to pass through the road­blocks with less has­sle than those with no rea­son for be­ing on the road. 

“If you don’t have a rea­son or jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, they would very well spend some more time scru­ti­n­is­ing and do­ing some in­ves­ti­ga­tion to ver­i­fy the rea­son for you be­ing on the road. It doesn’t mean that you are break­ing the law but what you are do­ing is af­fect­ing in­di­vid­u­als, you are breach­ing poli­cies,” the CoP said.

“We are here to per­suade per­sons to ad­here to poli­cies and to en­force laws. I am not go­ing to cross it, so in sit­u­a­tions where per­sons have a le­git­i­mate rea­son for be­ing on the road, ob­vi­ous­ly, they will move out faster than in­di­vid­u­als who do not.”

Grif­fith said if there is a marked re­duc­tion in ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic, the po­lice would re­duce the num­ber of road­blocks but if the traf­fic con­tin­ues on the cur­rent trend, the road­blocks will in­crease.

Speak­ing dur­ing the dai­ly press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said the road­blocks were part of the COVID-19 re­sponse. He said the coun­try has a very ac­tive and ag­gres­sive Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and the ex­er­cis­es were be­ing co-or­di­nat­ed be­tween the TTPS and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. 

On so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day, com­ments on a Guardian Me­dia on­line sto­ry about the road­block ear­li­er in the day var­ied. Many praised the po­lice and chid­ed their fel­low com­pa­tri­ots for be­ing out­side.

“Peo­ple start­ing to get rest­less and idle like they don’t know how se­ri­ous this thing is un­til it hap­pen to them once you have food and wa­ter, rock back home, play some cards or games clean yuh yard or some­thing don’t risk yuh self be­ing out there,” one user wrote. 

How­ev­er, some took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to crit­i­cise the po­lice and the Gov­ern­ment, as one user wrote, “Trinidad peo­ple stu­pid, we not un­der no state of emer­gency, (SOE) and peo­ple have things to do. All yuh study­ing the wrong thing. Why you have to qual­i­fy to get mon­ey from the Gov­ern­ment. It have a lot of hun­gry fam­i­lies in this coun­try but this gov­ern­ment on­ly study­ing to put up road­blocks. That not mak­ing no sense.”

How yes­ter­day’s road­block ex­er­cis­es went

Trinidad:

8 am-11 am

• Joint road­block ex­er­cis­es, rov­ing street checks and foot pa­trol du­ties (along Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade) were con­duct­ed by the IATF, CID and the PoS Di­vi­sion, with the full sup­port of the Mount­ed and Ca­nine Branch, Port-of-Spain Task Force, Traf­fic and High­way Pa­trol Branch, Op­er­a­tion Com­mand Cen­tre, Air Sup­port Unit, Fi­nance Branch, Au­dio-Vi­su­al Unit and the Port-of-Spain Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice. 

• Road­blocks took place at five strate­gic lo­ca­tions in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, along the East­ern Main Road, Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route, Beetham High­way, St Ann’s Round-a-bout and the cor­ner of Sackville Street and Wright­son Road.  

• Sev­en­ty-six Street Check Forms were com­plet­ed, one tick­et was is­sued and one per­son was ar­rest­ed on an out­stand­ing war­rant.  

• Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5,525 ve­hi­cles were in­ter­cept­ed with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 9,825 per­sons aboard.  

• Many were in the ‘non-es­sen­tial’ cat­e­go­ry. Some in­di­cat­ed they were on their way to the bank and su­per­mar­ket.

Some gave ‘in­con­se­quen­tial’ rea­sons for be­ing out such as:

—“Ah go­ing to sell ah dog”, —“Ah go­ing to cool meh brain in Care­nage”

—“Ah just go­ing to meet meh boyfriend”.  

• The T&T Guardian was al­so told that some mem­bers of the pub­lic serv­ing in the es­sen­tial ser­vices did not have em­ploy­ment iden­ti­fi­ca­tion but pro­duced old let­ters from their al­leged em­ploy­ers.  

• Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith con­firmed the ex­er­cis­es were in­ci­dent-free in Trinidad.

To­ba­go

8 am-11 am

• Of­fi­cers of the Crown Point Po­lice Sta­tion stopped and sent home over 75 per­sons. 

• Over 1,000 were in the area of Or­ange Hill, Ba­co­let and the town of Scar­bor­ough.

• More than 75 per­sons were sent home by the of­fi­cers at­tached to the Scar­bor­ough Po­lice Sta­tion.

• Of­fi­cers at­tached to the Mo­ri­ah Po­lice Sta­tion stopped and sent home over 50 per­sons in the ar­eas of Les Coteaux, Prov­i­dence Road, Mo­ri­ah—all of whom were non-es­sen­tial per­sons.

• Of­fi­cers from the Rox­bor­ough Po­lice Sta­tion stopped and sent home over 215 per­sons who were non-es­sen­tial.

• Po­lice con­firm that per­sons could not give a prop­er ac­count for be­ing on the road­way. Four per­sons were ar­rest­ed - 2 for House Break­ing and Lar­ce­ny, 1 on out­stand­ing war­rant and one per­son was held for us­ing a record­ing which was deemed to be ob­scene.

• Ex­er­cis­es in To­ba­go were in­ci­dent-free.