A 50-year-old man was fined $3,000 for con­sum­ing al­co­hol in a pub­lic place con­trary to the Emer­gency Pow­er Reg­u­la­tions 2021.

He ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Avion Gill at the Ari­ma Mag­is­trates’ Court yes­ter­day.

Po­lice said Cor­nell Be­deau, of Bark­er Street, San­gre Grande, was fined af­ter he plead­ed guilty to the of­fence.

He has four months to pay or he faces two months im­pris­on­ment.

Po­lice re­port­ed that around 12.10 pm on Thurs­day, of­fi­cers of the Ari­ma Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Street Pa­trol Unit, were on mo­bile pa­trol ex­er­cise in the vicin­i­ty of Hearty Foods Su­per­mar­ket, Ari­ma, when a man was ob­served con­sum­ing a bev­er­age in a green bot­tle.

WPC O’Con­nell fur­ther ob­served that the man was al­so in pos­ses­sion of three sim­i­lar bot­tles. The man was in­formed of the of­fence he was com­mit­ting to which he stat­ed that he was just drink­ing some beers and wait­ing on two friends.

He was ar­rest­ed and tak­en to the Ari­ma Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion where he was charged with the of­fence.

Sec­tion 3 (1) (k) of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions 2021 states that dur­ing the pe­ri­od of pub­lic emer­gency be­tween the hours of 5.01 am to 8:59 pm every day, a per­son shall not con­sume al­co­hol in a pub­lic place.

The ex­er­cise was su­per­vised by In­spec­tor Maxwell and Sgt Hen­der­son.