SHANE SU­PERVILLE

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

While it may be a trend for the pub­lic to sneak in­to Car­ni­val bands and linger with mas­quer­aders, se­nior po­lice are warn­ing cit­i­zens not to jump in­to pa­rade for­ma­tions and dance with of­fi­cers for to­day’s In­de­pen­dence Day Pa­rade.

The ad­vice came from Gold Com­man­der of In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions and ACP North West Win­ston Ma­haraj who warned the pub­lic to keep their dis­tance for the pa­rade.

Ma­haraj is­sued the warn­ing dur­ing the week­ly po­lice me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, on Sackville Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

He not­ed that se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols re­quired that the pub­lic keep their dis­tance from parad­ing of­fi­cers dur­ing their route in the cap­i­tal city.

“We want to ad­vise mem­bers of the pub­lic that while you may be tempt­ed, with the sweet sounds of the bands, while you may be tempt­ed to jump in­to the pa­rade, it is not one of those pa­rades.

“It is a mil­i­tary pa­rade that has been put on by the State with mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices both armed and un­armed and you are to de­sist or re­sist the temp­ta­tion to jump in.

“Re­serve that for the oth­er types of con­certs,” he said.

Ma­haraj al­so re­mind­ed spec­ta­tors that the use of drones was re­strict­ed dur­ing the pa­rade for safe­ty rea­sons.

He not­ed that a to­tal of 12 Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) bus­es would be avail­able to shut­tle spe­cial­ly in­vit­ed guests from down­town Port-of-Spain to the Grand Stand of the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah and back to their start­ing points for the pa­rade.

Ma­haraj said peo­ple who al­ready booked tick­ets for seats in the Sa­van­nah’s Grand Stand could ac­cess park­ing on the west­ern side of the Sa­van­nah near Ca­su­al Cor­ner, the first bend in­to the Sa­van­nah from the US Em­bassy.

He said peo­ple could al­so view the pa­rade from the bleach­ers which were tem­po­rary seat­ing arrange­ments built on the east­ern end of the QPS.

He not­ed these seats had a max­i­mum ca­pac­i­ty of 500 adding that po­lice and fire of­fi­cers would be avail­able to en­sure com­pli­ance.

For these vis­i­tors, park­ing would be ac­ces­si­ble from the St Ann’s Round­about.

Ma­haraj said that while fire­works were con­sid­ered the high point of all In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions af­ter dark, he warned that aim­ing fire­works at elec­tri­cal trans­form­ers, pass­ing ve­hi­cles, peo­ple and pets were not ad­vised.

“There are spaces where fire­works use is re­strict­ed.

“With­out go­ing in­to leg­is­la­tion, a com­mon sense ap­proach would point peo­ple in the di­rec­tion where these de­vices can and should be used, who should be us­ing it and how it should be han­dled.

“While we may not have the pub­lic who are trained pro­fes­sion­als, it fol­lows then you should be guard­ed in the use of fire­works set­ting them off in pub­lic spaces, aim­ing them at hous­es, pets and oth­er hu­man be­ings. That’s a com­mon sense ap­proach that re­quires some lev­el of com­mu­ni­ty su­per­vi­sion and I dare say parental su­per­vi­sion,” Ma­haraj said.

“I will want to dis­suade peo­ple from us­ing fire­works in built up ar­eas; we’ve seen peo­ple who have been los­ing their homes who have had their homes burnt to the ground due to the in­dis­crim­i­nate use of fire­works,” he added.

Ma­haraj said var­i­ous units of the po­lice would be avail­able and on hand to main­tain or­der for the cel­e­bra­tions.