RALPH BAN­WARIE

San­gre Grande po­lice have is­sued the high­est num­ber of face mask tick­ets to peo­ple since the COVID-19 health reg­u­la­tions be­came ef­fec­tive.

Sgts John­son and Gar­cia told Guardian Me­dia that with the 10 tick­ets is­sued to per­sons who failed to wear face masks dur­ing a traf­fic ex­er­cise con­duct­ed on Sat­ur­day morn­ing, it had pushed their fixed tick­et to­tal to 2,119—the high­est across the di­vi­sions in T&T.

Of­fi­cers who con­duct­ed the lat­est ex­er­cise said peo­ple are still very re­luc­tant to wear face masks. How­ev­er, they not­ed that it re­mains an il­log­i­cal prac­tice to pay a $1,000 fine for not wear­ing a mask which can cost as lit­tle as $10.

On Sat­ur­day dur­ing the ex­er­cise con­duct­ed along the East­ern Main Road, San­gre Grande, which be­gan at 4 am and end­ed at 8 am, five dri­vers were al­so tick­et­ed for dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol.

The five ar­rest­ed for DUI in­clud­ed a 47- year-old AC tech­ni­cian of Ari­ma; a 26 -year-old sales clerk of Pin­to Road, Ari­ma; a 56-year-old San­gre Grande fab­ri­ca­tor and a 56-year-old San­gre Grande labour­er. Of­fi­cers al­so is­sued 17 traf­fic tick­ets for var­i­ous of­fences

One Raven P25 pis­tol, one mag­a­zine and 14 rounds of .25 am­mu­ni­tion were al­so found in an aban­doned house at Walke Street, San­gre Grande, in a sep­a­rate ex­er­cise.

The ex­er­cis­es were co-or­di­nat­ed by In­sp Kistow and su­per­vised by Sgts John­son and Gar­cia, Cpls Sankar, Pooran, PC Joseph, Juter­am, Mur­ray WPC Moses, Williams and oth­er of­fi­cers.

Charges were laid by Sgt Gar­cia, PC Mur­ray and WPC Moses.

Ag In­sp Kistow, head of San­gre Grande Traf­fic Branch, praised his of­fi­cers for their con­tin­ued ded­i­ca­tion to du­ties.

Se­nior of­fi­cers said the reg­u­lar DUI ex­er­cis­es have be­come nec­es­sary due to three road fa­tal­i­ties in the East­ern Di­vi­sion over the last few weeks.