Jensen La Vende

When Gold Com­man­der in charge of se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions for Car­ni­val 2015, DCP Harold Phillip warned rev­ellers not to wineag­gres­sive­ly on his po­lice of­fi­cers, he failed to is­sue any such warn­ing to his of­fi­cers. The re­sult: at least one of­fi­cer caught on cam­era "tak­ing a wine."A nine-sec­ond video post­ed to Face­book yes­ter­day de­pict­ed the of­fi­cer in full uni­form gy­rat­ing on a fe­male pa­tron at a break­fast par­ty in west Trinidad. Up to 4 pm, the video had been shared 40,118 times.

On Feb­ru­ary 4, dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing on Car­ni­val safe­ty Phillip said: "Well, cer­tain­ly be­ing lewd in the pub­lic is in fact an of­fence and with re­spect to win­ing on po­lice of­fi­cers per­form­ing du­ties, we will ask the pub­lic to de­sist in so do­ing. It nor­mal­ly goes with the time but we al­so ex­pect the of­fi­cer to act re­spon­si­bly and we al­so hope the pub­lic will con­duct them­selves in a re­spon­si­ble man­ner."

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, pub­lic in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer Joanne Archie said the of­fi­cer's con­duct will have to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed be­fore any­thing fur­ther could be said or done."That could be a breach of dis­ci­pline ac­cord­ing to po­lice reg­u­la­tions," Archie said, adding that even if the of­fi­cer had com­plet­ed his du­ty he ought not to have been in uni­form gy­rat­ing on a pa­tron.

Al­so com­ment­ing on the video, sec­re­tary of the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion In­sp Michael Seales said he hoped that the of­fi­cer in ques­tion is not charged. Seales said in the cul­ture of this coun­try the of­fi­cer and the pa­tron were "thor­ough­ly en­joy­ing them­selves" and of­fi­cials should con­sid­er the sit­u­a­tion as just part of T&T cul­ture.

He added that pun­ish­ing the of­fi­cer might bring about more harm than good and with the ex­ist­ing strain on of­fi­cers who are seek­ing to set­tle wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, a charge against the of­fi­cer may fur­ther damp­en their spir­its.

The in­ci­dent could even bol­ster re­la­tions be­tween the po­lice and the pub­lic, Seales said, al­though he ad­mit­ted that it was the first time he had seen of a uni­formed of­fi­cer gy­rat­ing in that way, since the norm was for of­fi­cers to be am­bushed by win­ing rev­ellers, with­out rec­i­p­ro­cat­ing."I did not see a re­butt from the of­fi­cer or the pa­tron," Seales said.