The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Gary Grif­fith, has re-stat­ed that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) will not ar­rest cit­i­zens il­le­gal­ly—a clear breach of their Con­sti­tu­tion­al rights—and re­mains com­mit­ted to up­hold­ing the law.

The top cop was re­spond­ing to com­ments made by the Prime Min­is­ter dur­ing a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Sat­ur­day 12 Sep­tem­ber 2020, in which the PM ex­pressed con­cern over how the Po­lice Ser­vice was en­forc­ing the COVID-19 Reg­u­la­tions.

The Prime Min­is­ter was re­fer­ring to the re­cent con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the TTPS’ han­dling of an al­leged breach of the Reg­u­la­tions at a pool-side par­ty in Bay­side Tow­ers.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment is­sued this morn­ing, Sun­day, Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith says it is up to the Gov­ern­ment—not the Po­lice Ser­vice—to en­sure that the law al­lows for the en­force­ment of the COVID-19 Reg­u­la­tions on pri­vate prop­er­ty.

He stat­ed: “If the GORTT wish­es to have en­force­ment of the reg­u­la­tions on pri­vate prop­er­ty and in­side per­sons homes, they need to amend the leg­is­la­tion or pro­vide new leg­is­la­tion that would al­low the po­lice clear and un­am­bigu­ous au­thor­i­ty to do what the Prime Min­is­ter has in­sin­u­at­ed should be done.”

The full text of the state­ment is­sued by the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, fol­lows… 

CoP: "PM al­lud­ing for po­lice to breach con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of per­sons by ar­rest­ing them for acts com­mit­ted when there was no law en­act­ed to do so. I am com­mit­ted to up­hold the law and not break it by ar­rest­ing per­sons il­le­gal­ly as pro­posed."

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) notes with some de­gree of dis­ap­point­ment the com­ments of the Hon­or­able Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day where he al­lud­ed to and/or in­sin­u­at­ed that the TTPS failed to do its job as it re­lat­ed to the mat­ter in­volv­ing a par­ty held pool­side at Bay­side Tow­ers in Co­corite. In ef­fect, the TTPS was thrown un­der the prover­bial bus.

The TTPS stands ready and com­mit­ted to en­force ALL laws passed by the Gov­ern­ment, how­ev­er we must be wary of sim­ply re­spond­ing to pub­lic or po­lit­i­cal pres­sure es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lates to po­ten­tial­ly abus­ing the rights of in­di­vid­u­als and/or act­ing il­le­gal­ly in a quest to sat­is­fy pub­lic or po­lit­i­cal pres­sure. The sim­ple ques­tion be­fore the TTPS is can we en­ter pri­vate prop­er­ty with­out a war­rant and charge per­sons for com­mit­ting vi­o­la­tions of the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance sim­ply be­cause they num­ber more than five? We have sought and re­ceived sev­er­al le­gal opin­ions on this and are in­deed com­fort­able with our cur­rent in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the law and there­fore our re­sponse to the mat­ter at hand.

The law as cur­rent­ly con­struct­ed does NOT di­min­ish a per­son's con­sti­tu­tion­al rights as a whole and in par­tic­u­lar, their rights to en­joy prop­er­ty. This makes for a dif­fi­cult judge­ment call on the part of the TTPS. For in­stance, if 20 own­ers of prop­er­ty at BaysideTow­ers, or any oth­er gat­ed com­mu­ni­ty, were at the com­mon area pool re­lax­ing, is it be­ing sug­gest­ed we should en­ter the com­pound and ar­rest them all for vi­o­lat­ing the Covid-19 reg­u­la­tions sim­ply be­cause they num­ber more than five? The TTPS re­calls that the num­ber es­tab­lished by the Or­di­nance at the time of the gen­er­al elec­tion was 10 yet we heard no out­rage at that time when ALL po­lit­i­cal par­ties were push­ing the lim­its of the law. And in those in­stances, there was no ques­tion of pri­vate ver­sus pub­lic space. We did then what we did in Bay­side; cau­tion per­sons!

Is the is­sue with this Bay­side mat­ter the num­ber of peo­ple, or the fact it was a par­ty, or the fact it was on so­cial me­dia, or the fact that they are per­ceived as rich?

As the TTPS, we re­spond to breach­es of the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance. We don’t re­spond to per­cep­tions of race, creed, or class. The av­er­age cit­i­zen can on­ly en­ter Bay­side if in­vit­ed. Some­one in­vit­ed those peo­ple there. Bay­side Res­i­den­tial As­so­ci­a­tion has it with­in their rules to con­trol these is­sues among them­selves. They are the com­mu­nal own­ers of that prop­er­ty. In this par­tic­u­lar case, it was the very neigh­bors in­side Bay­side that called to com­plain, and TTPS re­spond­ed. By the time we ar­rived we saw noth­ing in terms of num­bers or ac­tiv­i­ties con­sis­tent with what was shared on so­cial me­dia.

We ac­cept that this pan­dem­ic dic­tates that things can­not pro­ceed as nor­mal as one per­son’s sil­ly ac­tions can have a dam­ag­ing ef­fect on the en­tire pop­u­la­tion. Hav­ing said that, the TTPS must bal­ance the com­pet­ing in­ter­ests of the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance and the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of cit­i­zens. We try to do so even­ly. Since the be­gin­ning of the “lock­down’, we have con­sis­tent­ly tak­en the ap­proach to warn and per­suade ahead of ar­rest. The sug­ges­tion that some­how per­sons at one lo­ca­tion have got­ten priv­i­leges that oth­ers haven’t got­ten is ridicu­lous, mis­in­formed, and dan­ger­ous, and on­ly in­flames an al­ready del­i­cate sit­u­a­tion.

The so­lu­tion to this mat­ter lies in the hands of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and not the Po­lice. If the GORTT wish­es to have en­force­ment of the reg­u­la­tions on pri­vate prop­er­ty and in­side per­sons homes, they need to amend the leg­is­la­tion or pro­vide new leg­is­la­tion that would al­low the po­lice clear and un­am­bigu­ous au­thor­i­ty to do what the Prime Min­is­ter has in­sin­u­at­ed should be done.

The Prime Min­is­ter, as the most ex­pe­ri­enced politi­cian in the Gov­ern­ment, should know that the amend­ments to the law can­not be done through press con­fer­ences. The PM should know that any changes to the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of cit­i­zens should be done through Par­lia­ment. His At­tor­ney Gen­er­al should so ad­vise him of this. If we re­spond to in­ci­dents like the one at Bay­side and sim­ply start ar­rest­ing peo­ple there would be hun­dreds of law­suits against the State for wrong­ful ar­rest since no law would have been amend­ed to re­flect this. This ap­proach to law en­force­ment, rem­i­nis­cent of the il­le­gal ar­rests of the 2011 State of Emer­gency, is ob­scene and if pur­sued, will cost the State mil­lions of dol­lars in dam­ages and le­gal costs af­ter suc­cess­ful suits.

If the PM was gen­uine in his claims that no one is above the law and all should be dealt with equal­ly, he would not put the TTPS to be the fall guy by giv­ing us the pow­er to ar­rest those from hum­ble re­sources who swim in pub­lic spaces, but pre­vents us from tak­ing ac­tion on those who com­mit sim­i­lar acts in the haven of lux­u­ri­ous pools in pri­vate prop­er­ty which we have been giv­en no pow­er to ar­rest such for­tu­nate in­di­vid­u­als.