Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

Po­lice of­fi­cers will be equipped with pep­per spray, tasers from Mon­day to deal with peo­ple who re­sist ar­rests and move to phys­i­cal­ly as­sault of­fi­cers while they are ex­e­cut­ing their du­ties.

This was dis­closed by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith on Tues­day dur­ing the po­lice week­ly me­dia brief­ing.

Grif­fith re­ferred to an in­ci­dent in which po­lice tried to de­tain mi­grants who were thought to be with­out doc­u­men­ta­tion re­cent­ly in Moru­ga and al­so on the video that went vi­ral where a ven­dor slapped a po­lice of­fi­cer.

“These per­sons were break­ing the law, they were be­ing ar­rest­ed and they tried to re­sist ar­rest. It’s some­thing I in­tend to deal with. We can­not have po­lice of­fi­cers try­ing to re­strain per­sons and they be­lieve it is their right to re­tal­i­ate. They can dam­age a po­lice of­fi­cer or they could dam­age them­selves. With im­me­di­ate ef­fect, from Mon­day, every po­lice of­fi­cer is go­ing to have pep­per spray. Trust me, it’s not a nice feel­ing,” Grif­fith said.

“The pep­per spray will be is­sued, there are al­so tasers that have been is­sued for hun­dreds of po­lice of­fi­cers. We must have a min­i­mum use of force pol­i­cy to en­sure that of­fi­cers will be pro­tect­ed with­out the use of a firearm,” he added.

He as­sured with the pep­per sprays and tasers out, the use of firearms will be “last re­sort.”

Grif­fith al­so as­sured that every of­fi­cer will be equipped with body cam­eras next year.