Or­ders are await­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence per­pe­tra­tors.

Fol­low­ing a re­cent spike in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence cas­es, po­lice are ready to give do­mes­tic vi­o­lence per­pe­tra­tors “Stay Home” or­ders in an “un­com­fort­able” place.

“So don’t wait un­til too late to call po­lice—come for­ward,” Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day urged do­mes­tic vi­o­lence vic­tims.

He con­firmed the in­crease in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence cas­es while speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s me­dia brief­ing on the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion

He said mem­bers of the pub­lic have been deal­ing with var­i­ous in­creased iso­la­tion/so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures to pre­vent virus spread as Gov­ern­ment’s “Stay Home” man­date was ex­tend­ed to month-end. Med­ical ex­perts have ac­knowl­edged phys­i­cal, men­tal and emo­tion­al pres­sures which some may suf­fer re­sult­ing from re­stric­tions.

How­ev­er, Grif­fith said po­lice had no­ticed a spike in do­mes­tic cas­es for Feb­ru­ary and March com­pared to last year’s fig­ures. He said da­ta’s shown an es­ca­la­tion of as­saults. In Feb­ru­ary 2019, there were 39 and this Feb­ru­ary 73. The fig­ure in March 2019 was 42 and it’s 96 for last month. The over­all fig­ure for re­ports for 2019 was 232 - but it’s al­ready 558 this year.

Grif­fith said the sit­u­a­tion could be be­cause more vic­tims are sub­mit­ting re­ports to the po­lice’s Gen­der-based Vi­o­lence Unit. He al­so not­ed that over­seas, there’s been in­creas­es in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence where “Stay Home” or­ders are in force.

But Grif­fith said the sit­u­a­tion isn’t busi­ness as usu­al with the prob­lem in T&T. Es­pe­cial­ly due to the “Stay Home” man­date, he warned per­pe­tra­tors, “You can’t do what you want in your home and ex­pect noth­ing will hap­pen - you may end up with Stay Home or­ders. But it may not be in your home, it may be in an un­com­fort­able place.”

He urged vic­tims to con­tact po­lice if such ac­tiv­i­ty is go­ing on.

“If a per­pe­tra­tor is com­mit­ting a crime, we can move him and he’ll have to ‘stay home’ in more un­com­fort­able place. So come for­ward,” he said.

On Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent failed bid to hire four pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies to pa­trol cer­tain ar­eas, Grif­fith said he’d been in­formed of the plan but po­lice hadn’t “reignit­ed” it. The same plan was used by the last gov­ern­ment in 2014.

He said the plan was brought to the po­lice’s at­ten­tion last Sat­ur­day and there was a meet­ing on it on Mon­day.

“I gave some rec­om­men­da­tions to im­prove it and make it ef­fec­tive, as I knew how it worked a few years ago. But un­for­tu­nate­ly, the pol­i­cy was dropped. I had my views but un­for­tu­nate­ly it went in a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion,” he said.

“It wasn’t pol­i­cy rec­om­mend­ed by po­lice but we’d have wel­comed it be­cause this is a very large coun­try and try­ing to lock it down in a sit­u­a­tion like this is very dif­fi­cult. For in­stance, in Dun­don­ald Hill a few days ago, we spent hours go­ing through pa­trols.”

He said there was no dif­fer­ence of opin­ion with Gov­ern­ment on the plan or oth­er is­sues.

Grif­fith al­so said the Fi­nance Min­istry has pro­vid­ed re­quest­ed as­sis­tance for po­lice to get tools —masks etc—for the COVID-19 re­sponse.

He added, “What we need more than any­thing else is pub­lic sup­port. There are 8,000 of­fi­cers and we may drop the ball now and then but peo­ple shouldn’t de­monise of­fi­cers. Help us to help you, give us in­for­ma­tion.”

Apol­o­gis­ing for sit­u­a­tions where po­lice “drop the ball”, he said the COVID sit­u­a­tion is very flu­id and where cit­i­zens had con­cerns they should con­tact po­lice hot­lines.

Grif­fith said the au­thor­i­ties are close to com­plet­ing the probe on the re­cent in­ci­dent where of­fi­cers on a joint pa­trol, two of­fi­cers and two sol­diers, abused a home­less per­son, forc­ing the man to drink al­co­hol and do sprints.

Mean­while, Gov­ern­ment will hold a vir­tu­al town meet­ing - via elec­tron­ic me­dia- at 10 am to­mor­row, in­clud­ing with doc­tors, to an­swer pub­lic queries on the COVID is­sue.