Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

Par­ty pro­mot­ers plan­ning events which have the po­ten­tial of turn­ing in­to mass gath­er­ings will be clamped down by the po­lice as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith promis­es to in­ten­si­fy pa­trols.

Grif­fith, in a state­ment yes­ter­day, said the po­lice can­not be every­where or know every event that is be­ing planned but added that as soon as re­al-time in­for­ma­tion is known about any event, ac­tion will be tak­en.

He gave an ex­am­ple of the in­ci­dent that oc­curred over the week­end on the com­pound of Pas­sage to Asia in Ch­agua­nas, where he was able to act im­me­di­ate­ly.

Grif­fith said he al­so no­ticed that peo­ple were post­ing pho­tographs and videos on so­cial me­dia that are not cur­rent.

“What this does is to send the po­lice on a wild goose chase on­ly to find out that the pho­tographs and videos were old.”

Grif­fith said there has been an in­crease in par­ties from Old Year’s Day to now.

He has asked the pub­lic to take note of Sec­tion 3 (1) of the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance which states that dur­ing the pe­ri­od spec­i­fied in Reg­u­la­tion 17, a per­son shall not, with­out rea­son­able jus­ti­fi­ca­tion– (a) be found at any pub­lic place where the num­ber of per­sons gath­ered, at any time, ex­ceeds ten.”

“These re­cent pub­lic events had more than ten per­sons and re­cent pub­lic events clear­ly show that per­sons in at­ten­dance were not wear­ing masks for which they have been tick­et­ed,” Grif­fith said.

“The COVID-19 virus is still with us and such be­hav­iour from mem­bers of the pub­lic can on­ly lead to the virus be­ing spread with more per­sons be­ing af­fect­ed,” he added.

“The TTPS will in­crease its pa­trols to deal with these events which are be­ing planned, some of which are be­ing ad­ver­tised on so­cial me­dia, which in­clude beach­es across the coun­try,” Grif­fith said.

The Com­mis­sion­er has ap­pealed to the pub­lic that as soon as they be­come aware of any event that has the po­ten­tial to have a mass gath­er­ing, to con­tact 999 or whats app 482-GARY im­me­di­ate­ly.