Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Fol­low­ing a pub­lic spat over the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s fail­ure to charge any­one in­volved in a pool­side par­ty at the Bay­side Tow­ers for breach of COVID-19 health pro­to­cols last week, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith met at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day and ironed out their is­sues.

And fol­low­ing the meet­ing, Grif­fith said the dis­agree­ment was now be­hind them and is now re­solv­ing to en­sure the TTPS gets the pub­lic to ful­ly com­ply with the reg­u­la­tions to en­sure the coun­try is pro­tect­ed from the spread of the virus.

“That is wa­ter un­der the bridge. The Prime Min­is­ter has an im­por­tant role to play be­cause he is gov­ern­ing the na­tion. I ob­vi­ous­ly have a role to play to en­sure laws are en­forced, and the po­lice will not breach our au­thor­i­ty,” Grif­fith told Guardian Me­dia hours af­ter the meet­ing with Row­ley yes­ter­day.

The meet­ing came af­ter Row­ley had ques­tioned the po­lice’s re­sponse to the pool par­ty at Bay­side Tow­ers in Co­corite, where no one was charged al­though there was a clear breach of the pub­lic health or­di­nance for so­cial gath­er­ings. This drew crit­i­cism from the pub­lic and once again raised the is­sue of whether one law was be­ing ap­plied to the rich and an­oth­er for the poor, since peo­ple had been ar­rest­ed and charged at oth­er pub­lic events where there were breach­es of the so­cial gath­er­ing law.

How­ev­er, Grif­fith re­spond­ed to the PM’s com­ments, ac­cus­ing him of be­ing hyp­o­crit­i­cal for crit­i­cis­ing the po­lice since they were un­able to act be­cause the law was vague as it re­lat­ed to ac­tiv­i­ties on pri­vate prop­er­ties.

But af­ter their con­ver­sa­tion, Grif­fith said the meet­ing was a very pro­duc­tive one, adding he now un­der­stands the Prime Min­is­ter’s con­cerns about the be­hav­iour of some cit­i­zens. He said the po­lice will con­tin­ue to en­force laws and en­cour­age those in pri­vate spaces to be re­spon­si­ble.

How­ev­er, Grif­fith re­peat­ed that po­lice do not have the au­thor­i­ty in a pri­vate place to pre­vent peo­ple from as­sem­bling in groups of more than five, or to en­force face mask use.

“As it per­tains to pri­vate places, as the Prime Min­is­ter right­ly stat­ed, per­sons were be­ing ir­re­spon­si­ble, but as po­lice, we can­not po­lice or ar­rest peo­ple for stu­pid­i­ty. It puts us in a very dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion to lock­down the coun­try to pre­vent the virus from spread­ing by mak­ing sure per­sons ad­here to the re­stric­tions,” Grif­fith said.

How­ev­er, he de­nied ask­ing for any­thing from the Gov­ern­ment, say­ing that the TTPS will use all it can use un­der the ex­ist­ing laws.

“I’m see­ing if I can as­sist the Prime Min­is­ter’s pol­i­cy and di­rec­tions to try and get per­sons to be more ma­ture,” Grif­fith said.

Ear­li­er in the day, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter re­leased a state­ment via Face­book not­ing that Grif­fith and oth­er se­nior of­fi­cers had been sum­moned to a meet­ing which start­ed at 10 am.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice Jayson Forde and Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob al­so at­tend­ed yes­ter­day’s meet­ing.

How­ev­er, in a sub­se­quent re­lease, the TTPS took is­sue with the use of the term “sum­moned,” say­ing Grif­fith was in­vit­ed.

“It is un­for­tu­nate that the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit of the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter does not un­der­stand the dif­fer­ence be­tween ‘in­vit­ed’ and ‘sum­moned’,” the re­lease stat­ed.

The re­lease added that the meet­ing was very cor­dial, say­ing that the em­pha­sis will now be on all par­ties mov­ing for­ward to en­sure that the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance reg­u­la­tions are ad­hered to by mem­bers of the pub­lic.

The Prime Min­is­ter did not com­ment pub­licly on the meet­ing.