Hun­dreds of Mt D’or res­i­dents broke COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions ear­ly Sun­day morn­ing for a J’Ou­vert-type street par­ty that went on for hours be­fore po­lice re­spond­ed.

The par­ty in­volved the use of paint, mud and disc-jock­eys us­ing loud pub­lic ad­dress sys­tems, sim­i­lar to any Car­ni­val event.

Video of the event showed the hun­dreds of peo­ple crammed with­in the nar­row streets while danc­ing and singing to what is pop­u­lar­ly known as ‘Trini­bad” songs.

Oth­er videos lat­er showed res­i­dents run­ning along the road and dash­ing in­to yards af­ter po­lice even­tu­al­ly ar­rived.

The Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions make it il­le­gal for peo­ple to hold pub­lic par­ties or pub­lic fetes.

Po­lice were left red in the face yes­ter­day, try­ing to de­ter­mine how the event was al­lowed to go on pub­licly in such large num­bers with­out an ap­pro­pri­ate ear­ly re­sponse from law en­force­ment of­fi­cers.

Among those rais­ing con­cern was In­spec­tor Roger Alexan­der as he co-host­ed last evening’s Be­yond the Tape pro­gramme on TV6, “Where was the po­lice?”

Alexan­der said po­lice of­fi­cers had re­ceived some in­for­ma­tion about the event and went in­to the area at 2 am where they spoke to some peo­ple about it. He said it was on­ly around 5 am that the crowds swelled.

He not­ed that peo­ple are us­ing so­cial me­dia plat­forms, in­clud­ing Face­book, In­sta­gram and Twit­ter to ad­ver­tise events like these say­ing that “they now be­lieve they can be­have like this be­cause there is no law (en­force­ment) to pre­vent them”.

He said the po­lice will be mon­i­tor­ing these posts to see “where next”.

Res­i­dents who spoke with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day say their il­le­gal be­hav­iour was prompt­ed by frus­tra­tion over COVID-19 health reg­u­la­tions.

Speak­ing un­der a con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, one res­i­dent ac­knowl­edged that the event was un­law­ful but said the pres­sures of the pan­dem­ic had reached its ‘tip­ping point’.

“Ac­tu­al­ly it was just a lit­tle com­mu­ni­ty event. We didn’t ex­pect it to get so big and we de­cid­ed to do we own lit­tle com­mu­ni­ty J’Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tion. We re­al­ly fed up.”

Guardian Me­dia asked the res­i­dent how one could jus­ti­fy such an event in light of the coun­try’s cur­rent COVID-19 in­fec­tion rate and deaths. The in­di­vid­ual in­di­cat­ed that all health pro­to­cols ‘were fol­lowed to the best of their abil­i­ty’.

“In light of what go­ing on right now, we try our best to en­force COVID pro­to­cols... make sure peo­ple are vac­ci­nat­ed. You would have had to even en­ter with your mask and sani­tise, as men­tioned ear­li­er. We didn’t ex­pect the event to get so big what­so­ev­er.”

Sun­day’s event fol­lowed a sim­i­lar one in Sea Lots sev­er­al weeks ago which was al­so even­tu­al­ly bro­ken up by the po­lice.

Yes­ter­day Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters urged peo­ple not to act in ways that can com­pro­mise the health sys­tem.

His plea fol­lowed the un­veil­ing of the gov­ern­ment’s plans for its ‘Taste of Car­ni­val’ se­ries of events.

“I want to en­cour­age them to be safe. It’s not for their own safe­ty, it’s for the safe­ty of every­body be­cause when we have a sick coun­try and our health sys­tem is over­whelmed then we can’t do any­thing,” Pe­ters said.

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob said he was await­ing more in­for­ma­tion on the in­ci­dent and pledged that once de­tails were ob­tained, of­fi­cers will crack down on fu­ture un­law­ful events.