KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt.

Any­one think­ing about as­sault­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer, like the man seen slap­ping an of­fi­cer in a re­cent video, will be in for shock­ing con­se­quences. That was the warn­ing from Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day fol­low­ing an in­ci­dent in Port-of-Spain that was filmed and wide­ly shared on so­cial me­dia.

The Com­mis­sion­er said in two months every po­lice of­fi­cer will be armed with a taser or pep­per spray as the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is ex­pand­ing its use of non-lethal force to com­bat crim­i­nal be­hav­iours. 
The video shows a po­lice of­fi­cer pick­ing up a piece of pa­per that fell on the road. The of­fi­cer folds it and ap­proach­es a man sit­ting on a chair at the cor­ner of George Street and Queen Janelle Com­mis­siong Street in Port-of-Spain. In the back­ground, some­one is heard say­ing: “The man fling away the tick­et.”
The irate man be­gins point­ing his fin­ger, say­ing: “We will deal with that at an ap­pro­pri­ate time.” 
As the of­fi­cer stands be­fore him, he says: “Ex­cuse, do not bring that by me, please. I am ask­ing you. You do not know whose own is that. You pick up some­thing on the road? I am ask­ing you.”
As the man got off the chair, the of­fi­cer held him by his shoul­der. He re­spond­ed by slap­ping the of­fi­cer in his face.
“Shoot me and kill me,” the man said as oth­er of­fi­cers sur­round­ed and even­tu­al­ly ar­rest­ed him. 
Com­ment­ing on the in­ci­dent, Grif­fith warned that po­lice of­fices will no longer en­gage in lengthy stand­offs with peo­ple who be­have vi­o­lent­ly to­wards them.

“Sim­i­lar to the very fool­ish man who de­cid­ed to strike the po­lice of­fi­cer, it has be­come a habit of re­tal­i­a­tion by cit­i­zens when be­ing ar­rest­ed. Your po­lice of­fi­cers, whilst try­ing to be calm and pa­tient, will no longer be in­volved in these long phys­i­cal un­war­rant­ed con­fronta­tions.

“Maybe a year ago the of­fi­cer might have lim­it­ed op­tions be­cause to use a firearm in such cir­cum­stances would be ex­ces­sive use of force. Now, due to the dis­tri­b­u­tion of hun­dreds of taser guns and pep­per spray and one be­ing is­sued to every of­fi­cer in two months, these con­fronta­tions will be very short,” Grif­fith said.

“Pep­per spray may make one nev­er want to put pep­per in their dou­bles for a long time and tasers would be a shock­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, all read­i­ly avail­able for of­fi­cers to use on those who want to re­tal­i­ate. So I would plead with all, that when ar­rest­ed, com­ply and then com­plain. Do not re­tal­i­ate.”
Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith, who re­turned to work on Thurs­day af­ter some time in quar­an­tine fol­low­ing a va­ca­tion abroad, said his first or­der of busi­ness is to en­sure that peo­ple ad­here to the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance reg­u­la­tions. He plans to vis­it high vis­i­bil­i­ty ar­eas such as beach­es and bars where peo­ple con­tin­ue to gath­er in large num­bers. 
Grif­fith said he no­ticed that cit­i­zens seemed re­laxed with the re­duced COVID-19 pos­i­tive cas­es, and de­spite pleas and warn­ings, a large num­ber of peo­ple still do not wear masks in pub­lic. He said it came to his at­ten­tion that thou­sands gath­ered on beach­es last week­end and breached the law that man­dates the wear­ing of masks in pub­lic.
He said he had not­ed nu­mer­ous so­cial me­dia posts show­ing peo­ple with­out masks in pub­lic as well as large groups con­gre­gat­ing out­side bars, par­tic­u­lar­ly in St James, Wood­brook, and Care­nage.

With­in the past two months, po­lice is­sued more than 1573 tick­ets and ar­rest­ed 78 per­sons for beach­ing the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance (CoViD-19 Reg­u­la­tions) in the nine po­lice di­vi­sions.  On Tues­day, East­ern Di­vi­sion po­lice tick­et­ed 21 peo­ple for not wear­ing face masks in San­gre Grande. They were among 52 per­sons pe­nalised for var­i­ous of­fences dur­ing a road check ex­er­cise.
On Fri­day evening, Grif­fith led foot pa­trols through down­town Port-of-Spain. He said peo­ple wore their masks un­less they were eat­ing, drink­ing or smok­ing. 
While pa­trolling in Wood­brook, St James and ar­eas in west Trinidad, he did not see re­peats of pre­vi­ous in­ci­dents in­volv­ing many peo­ple gath­ered on the pave­ment out­side bars.