Two promi­nent at­tor­neys are agree­ing with Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith’s ar­gu­ment that it will be very dif­fi­cult for po­lice to crim­i­nal­ly en­force the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions on peo­ple who are in pri­vate res­i­dences.

The top­ic has been in the pub­lic do­main since last week, af­ter the mem­bers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice failed to charge any­one in­volved in a pool­side par­ty at the Bay­side Tow­ers in Co­corite. Af­ter pub­lic crit­i­cism over this, in­clud­ing a call from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to ap­ply the law eq­ui­tably to all cit­i­zens, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith said the law was vague as it ap­plied to of­fi­cers’ ju­ris­dic­tion in peo­ple’s pri­vate prop­er­ties,

Yes­ter­day, Se­nior Coun­sels Is­rael Khan and Mar­tin Daly held both the same and dif­fer­ing views on how as­pects of the is­sue should be dealt with.

“I am per­son­al­ly of the view that these peo­ple should be ar­rest­ed, but I am of the view that they can­not be ar­rest­ed,” Khan said about the Bay­side Tow­ers pool par­ty.

“You can­not re­al­ly in­vade pri­vate res­i­dences with­out hav­ing a war­rant that you sus­pect a crim­i­nal of­fence has been com­mit­ted.”

Daly agreed with this per­spec­tive.

“I have no doubt that the po­lice can­not just storm in­to ex­clu­sive­ly pri­vate prop­er­ty on the ba­sis that it’s just some of­fence against the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions is be­ing com­mit­ted.”

How­ev­er, Daly said peo­ple have to be care­ful in their in­ter­pre­ta­tions of the term ex­clu­sive­ly pri­vate prop­er­ty, as the in­ter­pre­ta­tion de­pends on cer­tain cir­cum­stances.

“We need to be very care­ful. If we say, well, they didn’t shut down this par­ty, but they shut down that par­ty. We have to be care­ful to dis­tin­guish the cir­cum­stances in which peo­ple went in­to a par­ty,” he said.

Say­ing he used the term ex­clu­sive­ly pri­vate in­ten­tion­al­ly, Daly said, for in­stance, if peo­ple use their pri­vate prop­er­ty to have a pay fete or to oth­er­wise do any­thing to sug­gest the pub­lic has ac­cess, that can turn a pri­vate space in­to a pub­lic space.

How­ev­er, in the in­stance of the Bay­side pool par­ty, Daly said it ap­peared those in at­ten­dance were ei­ther res­i­dents or friends of a res­i­dent, mean­ing it was like­ly in­ter­pret­ed as a pri­vate res­i­dence.

Ac­cord­ing to both at­tor­neys, if the Gov­ern­ment wish­es to en­force the reg­u­la­tions on pri­vate res­i­dences, the or­di­nances will have to be tak­en to Par­lia­ment.

Khan urged the Gov­ern­ment to do this, say­ing that the on­go­ing de­bate on the is­sue is very prob­lem­at­ic and could eas­i­ly be blown out of pro­por­tion.

How­ev­er, Khan said it was un­for­tu­nate that Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, a mem­ber of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, had be­come in­volved in a pub­lic spat with the Prime Min­is­ter over the is­sue.

“Just take the thing to Par­lia­ment and en­act the law. It’s very sim­ple like that...Every sen­si­ble per­son in this coun­try would re­alise that they must have law where they could make ar­rests for peo­ple who were do­ing what those peo­ple did,” Khan said.

Martin Daly SC

ANISTO ALVES

But Daly said there’s some­thing that con­cerns him more than the le­gal­i­ties of the is­sues - the so­cial im­pact of polic­ing.

He said the in­ci­dent in which young peo­ple found bathing in Sea Lots were put to lie down on the ground and hu­mil­i­at­ed had made a cer­tain men­tal im­pres­sion on peo­ple.

“There­fore, when oth­er peo­ple ap­pear to be do­ing some­thing sim­i­lar and they ap­pear to be in bet­ter cir­cum­stance, whether by colour, shade or in­come, it cre­ates a very un­for­tu­nate im­pres­sion, and you see that is why I be­lieve that the lan­guage that is be­ing used by peo­ple in high-of­fice needs to be more tem­pered,” Daly said.

He claimed the chick­ens are com­ing home to roost with the pre­vi­ous us­age of in­tem­per­ate lan­guage about cock­roach­es.

Daly added, “We can­not go on with the feel­ing that one sec­tion of the so­ci­ety is cock­roach­es and one sec­tion of the so­ci­ety is priv­i­leged.”

Khan al­so warned of signs of a grow­ing so­cial di­vide, say­ing, “All they need in this coun­try, they don’t need guns again, you know. They just need a box of match­es, you know. So it’s a very volatile sit­u­a­tion.”

Al­so com­ment­ing on the spat be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, for­mer Chief of De­fence Staff, Re­tired Ma­jor Gen­er­al Ralph Brown, ac­cused Grif­fith of dis­re­spect­ing the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

Claim­ing that Grif­fith’s be­hav­iour was un­be­com­ing of a mil­i­tary of­fi­cer and Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Brown said he be­lieved Grif­fith should have sought an au­di­ence with the Prime Min­is­ter in­stead of go­ing pub­lic with his con­cerns.

“Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith needs to re­think his po­si­tion on this and oth­er is­sues which have not gone un­no­ticed. If not, he should ten­der his res­ig­na­tion im­me­di­ate­ly,” Brown said. — Joshua Seemu­n­gal