DEREK ACHONG

Po­lice have de­tained over 250 peo­ple as they swooped down on a "zess­er" par­ty in Ca­roni, this morn­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, around 4 am, of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) led by Sgt Mark Her­nan­dez re­ceived in­for­ma­tion about the event that was tak­ing place at a ware­house at Riv­er Branch Trace, off the Ca­roni South Bank Road.

When the of­fi­cers ar­rived they found the pa­trons not wear­ing masks and prac­tic­ing so­cial dis­tanc­ing.

Sources said that some pa­trons at­tempt­ed to es­cape by climb­ing the 10-foot wall of the com­pound.

Some in­tox­i­cat­ed pa­trons man­aged the feat un­scathed while oth­ers were not as lucky as they suf­fered se­ri­ous in­juries in falling from the wall.

Some of the per­sons, who man­aged to es­cape with­out in­jury, were ar­rest­ed while walk­ing through neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ties as po­lice of­fi­cers, who sur­round­ed the area, no­ticed their mud­dy cloth­ing and bands from the par­ty.

Sources said that many at­ten­dees were known to po­lice as sus­pect­ed gang mem­bers. Sev­er­al il­le­gal firearms were al­so al­leged seized.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the at­ten­dees were pro­filed and pho­tographed at the lo­ca­tion with most be­ing al­lowed to leave af­ter as they would be charged via sum­mons.

In a press re­lease is­sued a short while ago, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith stat­ed that all the at­ten­dees would be charged on the on­go­ing pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions for the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, which pre­clude gath­er­ings of more than 10 per­sons and pub­lic fetes.

Grif­fith not­ed that his of­fi­cers would con­tin­ue to crack down on such events dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son and pa­trons would be ar­rest­ed and charged for their ir­re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iour.

"It is amaz­ing, that mere hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley and Min­is­ter of Health, Ter­rance Deyals­ingh, stressed on the dan­gers of large so­cial gath­er­ings at pub­lic events, over 250 cit­i­zens would throw cau­tion to the wind and par­tic­i­pate in such an event, which not on­ly en­dan­gers those who at­tend, but now these 250 plus per­sons will be re­turn­ing to their homes to al­so en­dan­ger their loved ones and the wider pub­lic," Grif­fith said.

Grif­fith al­so not­ed that some par­ty or­gan­is­ers have pre­vi­ous­ly at­tempt­ed to evade pros­e­cu­tion by claim­ing that the events were host­ed on pri­vate prop­er­ty not cov­ered by the reg­u­la­tions.

He not­ed that such events were stark­ly dif­fer­ent from small and re­spon­si­ble gath­er­ings of fam­i­ly and friends at homes.

"This is to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent to Zess­er par­ties, where or­ga­niz­ers are ad­ver­tis­ing pri­or to the event, and pa­trons are pay­ing a cov­er charge to en­ter the premise of per­sons they do not even know, with a cash bar at the event. This takes away the get out of jail free card of it be­ing pri­vate prop­er­ty as such the Po­lice would treat it as a vi­o­la­tion of the leg­is­la­tion," Grif­fith said.

The op­er­a­tion in­clud­ed of­fi­cers from the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF), the Mul­ti Op­er­a­tional Po­lice Squad (MOPS), and of­fi­cers from the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion un­der the com­mand of As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) Bal­ram and Se­nior Supt Si­mon.