KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Al­though Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says po­lice have no pow­er to shut down banks and su­per­mar­kets, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith main­tains his of­fi­cers can in­ter­vene in sit­u­a­tions where too many peo­ple are con­gre­gat­ing to save lives dur­ing the cur­rent “Stay-at-Home” COVID-19 mea­sures.

Grif­fith made his po­si­tion clear at a press con­fer­ence at the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing yes­ter­day, hours af­ter Row­ley said he (Grif­fith) did not have the au­thor­i­ty to do so. Grif­fith jus­ti­fied his po­si­tion by say­ing cit­i­zens who have been con­gre­gat­ing in large num­bers at some es­tab­lish­ments rep­re­sent a “clear and present dan­ger” as the State bat­tles the virus’ spread.

He said po­lice have been man­dat­ed to en­force the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance (COVID-19 Reg­u­la­tions) of 2020, which pro­hibits gath­er­ings of more than five peo­ple and said po­lice may be forced to close banks, su­per­mar­kets and mar­kets if cit­i­zens to do no ad­here to the strict guide­lines. 

“The biggest con­cern for the po­lice to en­sure that we ad­here to our ob­jec­tive, as stat­ed by the chair of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, is the im­me­di­ate prob­lem we have now. There is a clear and present dan­ger of hun­dreds of per­sons as­sem­bling out­side these in­sti­tu­tions, more so the banks, health cen­tres, mar­kets and gro­ceries and if this con­tin­ues, all of the work of the Prime Min­is­ter has spo­ken about can go to nought,” Grif­fith said.

Hav­ing vis­it­ed sev­er­al op­er­a­tions around Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said he met crowds at the en­trances, the ma­jor­i­ty of them el­der­ly cit­i­zens who are at greater risk of de­vel­op­ing se­vere cas­es of the virus, and the po­lice were forced to take mea­sures to en­sure so­cial dis­tance and the peace was kept at some of the venues where cit­i­zens were frus­trat­ed at hav­ing to wait long hours to con­duct busi­ness.

“Ei­ther we ar­rest all the per­sons, the hun­dreds of them in front of every sin­gle bank or shut down what is caus­ing the prob­lem. And I would take the de­ci­sion to do so,” Grif­fith said, not­ing the shut­downs will be tem­po­rary mea­sures to rec­ti­fy the crowd­ing is­sue. 
He ex­plained, how­ev­er, that if he de­cides to shut down any ser­vice, it would be done af­ter con­sult­ing with Row­ley as the chair­man of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. But he ques­tioned which sce­nario was bet­ter.

“I am in­sist­ing that all these per­sons who have that de­gree of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, the man­agers of every bank, fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion, health cen­tre, your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is not on­ly in­side but ex­ter­nal­ly as well,” he ap­pealed to the man­agers of the busi­ness­es in­volved.

Grif­fith was al­so an­noyed that some peo­ple’s fo­cus was on some­one leav­ing their homes at 2 am to ex­er­cise rather than those gath­er­ing out­side busi­ness­es, as in his view this was a “tick­ing time bomb” as they were al­so cre­at­ing sit­u­a­tions where there could be a ram­pant spread of the virus.

“It seems that some peo­ple are try­ing their best to pro­vide a wedge be­tween the rel­e­vant agen­cies and in­sti­tu­tions or the rel­e­vant lead­ers of this coun­try. I think that is very un­for­tu­nate. Cer­tain per­sons may be try­ing to sing for their sup­pers, like blog­gers, do­ing all that they can to try to shove a wedge and want­i­ng to make the Gov­ern­ment feel that they are rel­e­vant. This serves ab­solute­ly no pur­pose to­wards what we are deal­ing with.”

He iden­ti­fied a blog­ger, whom he said is paid $20,000 per month to car­ry out Gov­ern­ment’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions, say­ing she ac­cused him of want­i­ng to spread COVID-19. 

“This is damn­ing, it is mis­chie­vous, it is mis­lead­ing and bor­der­ing on treach­ery and trea­son,” he said.

Grif­fith re­it­er­at­ed that as the State makes the nec­es­sary poli­cies to com­bat the virus, the po­lice can on­ly do what is law­ful. He said if the po­lice act on poli­cies that are not in law, T&T would be­come a po­lice state. He said nei­ther Row­ley nor Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young spoke about tak­ing that course and he, as Com­mis­sion­er, would not.

How­ev­er, he said it was his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ed­u­cate cit­i­zens on their rights and the po­lice’s func­tion. He said po­lice were not grant­ed ad­di­tion­al pow­ers to ar­rest any­one who left their homes as there is no cur­few in place.

“We have a job to do; a very crit­i­cal job. This is a sit­u­a­tion in our coun­try where lives could be lost and we do not have time to play games and per­sons try­ing to play with words be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. We are all on the same page.”