SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

To­ba­go Po­lice have start­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to an event that took place at No Man’s Land on Sun­day night for pos­si­ble breach­es of the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions.

But while the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is ac­tive, po­lice of­fi­cers who tried to shut down the event while it was tak­ing place found them­selves strand­ed as they had no boats to take them out.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day, Se­nior Supt Ju­nior Ben­jamin said he learnt of the event while it was still go­ing on af­ter videos were shared with him.

In sev­er­al videos that have been shared wide­ly on so­cial me­dia, par­ty­go­ers can be seen win­ing in and out of the wa­ter, some of them on boats brack­et­ing the shore­line, as mu­sic played loud­ly from an­oth­er ves­sel.

“I saw some footage and im­me­di­ate­ly I sent this out to the of­fi­cers to find out if this was tak­ing place. Im­me­di­ate­ly, I con­tact­ed the Coast Guard as well and we de­cid­ed that we are try­ing to go via land to see if we could dif­fuse the sit­u­a­tion.How­ev­er, to get to that lo­ca­tion, we were told it is No Man’s Land, we en­coun­tered some dif­fi­cul­ty with the ter­rain,” Ben­jamin said.

He said the of­fi­cers tried to trek to No Man’s Land, which is typ­i­cal­ly ac­cessed by boat as the on­ly road lead­ing to it is pri­vate­ly owned.

“We en­coun­tered some se­ri­ous prob­lems with the ter­rain, there was a trench dug there that we could not cross, so the ter­rain be­came im­pass­able. The on­ly op­tion we had was to be on the sea and we had no ves­sels to as­sist us there so every­thing had to stop there.”

Ben­jamin said the of­fi­cers tried a dif­fer­ent tac­tic— they wait­ed for the par­ty­go­ers to re­turn to shore to try to in­ter­ro­gate them. But that plan too failed.

“My un­der­stand­ing is that when they saw the lights of the po­lice it was dis­persed and the ves­sels went dif­fer­ent places to en­sure that per­sons left and they did not even come in, they used pirogues to come off the boats so every­one was try­ing to find cre­ative ways to beat the sys­tem,” Ben­jamin said.

How­ev­er, those who have evad­ed the po­lice so far are not home free yet. Ben­jamin said there was still a pos­si­bil­i­ty they could face charges.

“We are look­ing at the footage to see if we can iden­ti­fy per­sons of in­ter­ests or even boats or as­sets that we can put some link­age to so we can pro­ceed to ver­i­fy what ex­act­ly tran­spired in this mat­ter.”

He said of­fi­cers have been work­ing “24/7” over the past few weeks to shut down par­ties that pop up all around the is­land.

“Every­body is do­ing these things but when you stop them at one lo­ca­tion, they tend to go to an­oth­er one. But we are on top of the game and we recog­nise what is hap­pen­ing and we are go­ing to meet them toe-to-toe be­cause we are go­ing to en­sure To­ba­go re­mains a place of law and or­der.”

Ben­jamin said on Sun­day, po­lice al­so had to break up a large crowd in Rox­bor­ough who were hav­ing an event. How­ev­er, he said no charges were laid in that in­stance.

Ben­jamin does not want the pub­lic to be­lieve they won’t be charged though. He sent out an ap­peal and a warn­ing to those who may seek to breach the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions in To­ba­go. “We want to re­al­ly send out an ap­peal to these per­sons that we are law-abid­ing peo­ple, so please if we can stay with­in the law, the po­lice will come out in its pow­er, in its au­thor­i­ty to en­sure we stamp out this type of be­hav­iour.”

He said the TTPS To­ba­go Di­vi­sion has start­ed talks with their Trinida­di­an coun­ter­parts and of­fi­cials at the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) to en­sure they are bet­ter pre­pared so an event like Sun­day’s does not go on un­in­ter­rupt­ed again. He is hop­ing the TTPS’ River­ine Unit can be utilised in To­ba­go.

“We have been talk­ing with the Coast Guard as well as seek­ing to col­lab­o­rate with the THA be­cause when you have to come from Trinidad, it might take a while, so this is a con­ver­sa­tion that has tak­en be­fore with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and I am cer­tain with­in the near dis­tant fu­ture as I con­tin­ue to col­lab­o­rate with our ACP, Mr (William) Nurse, that is go­ing to be one of the op­tions we are go­ing to be putting out there to see if the River­ine Unit could come across and as­sist us even when we have things of this na­ture,” Ben­jamin said.

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