Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith says po­lice have no­ticed an alarm­ing trend of cit­i­zens rush­ing on the na­tion’s roads to get home be­fore the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the night­ly cur­few.

This, the Com­mis­sion­er said, has led to a de­ci­sion to in­ten­si­fy po­lice ac­tion with night­ly road­blocks, speed­ing and DUI ex­er­cis­es in the hours lead­ing up to the cur­few.

“Right now, the most dan­ger­ous thing to do is to be out on the streets in that last hour be­fore cur­few be­cause it is like a race­track out there, per­sons are rac­ing, they’ve been by their girl­friend, their friends, their part­ners, some of them are drink­ing and they are fly­ing at ridicu­lous rates try­ing to get home be­fore the cur­few ends (sic). It is just by the grace of God we have not any ma­jor ac­ci­dents or deaths be­cause of this stu­pid­i­ty,” Grif­fith said.

Grif­fith told Guardian Me­dia in ad­di­tion to sur­veil­lance from the Com­mand Cen­tre, po­lice have al­so been re­ceiv­ing re­ports from con­cerned cit­i­zens.

“We are get­ting re­ports from peo­ple where they live, in dif­fer­ent places, where they see­ing cars fly­ing at ridicu­lous speeds and like­wise, where they are see­ing sev­er­al cars leav­ing places at the same time, just pri­or to the start of the cur­few,” he said.

He said this is a u-turn from the sit­u­a­tion dur­ing the last two SoEs, 1990 and 2011. He said at that time, cit­i­zens held cur­few par­ties and their guests would overnight at their homes.

“Be­cause of this type of SoE, they are not do­ing that. What they are do­ing is try­ing to max­imise the time un­til it is time to get back to their homes, which will jus­ti­fy as well the Prime Min­is­ter (Dr Kei­th Row­ley) cut­ting the cur­few hours on week­ends and even on pub­lic hol­i­days.”

Grif­fith said when the week­end cur­few be­gan at 9 pm, cit­i­zens would lime at the friends or rel­a­tives homes un­til 8.30 pm and then rush to get to their homes.

He said the road­blocks in­clud­ing speed traps will be­gin at 7 pm on week­days.

Grif­fith said the road­blocks are meant to be a de­ter­rent to cit­i­zens to stay off the roads and to stay home.

“That is why I went in ad­vance to try this from hap­pen­ing be­cause the more peo­ple po­lice ap­pre­hend, the more they will have to in­ter­act with per­sons and that can be an is­sue for po­lice of­fi­cers. We have al­ready seen the num­ber of po­lice of­fi­cers who have been quar­an­tined and of­fi­cers who are dy­ing be­cause of COVID-19, so the less we in­ter­act with the pub­lic, the bet­ter.”

Grif­fith: ‘No cur­few pass­es to take a break from your wife’

Those who have emer­gen­cies can con­tact the TTPS at 480-2000, 612-3876, 684-5730, 684-5076, 684-5035 and 684-5233 for an emer­gency cur­few pass, the Com­mis­sion­er said.

But he said al­though tem­po­rary pass­es are be­ing grant­ed, some cit­i­zens have been try­ing to abuse the sys­tem.

“Per­sons are stat­ing that their cook­ing gas fin­ished so they need to go out dur­ing the cur­few pe­ri­od to bor­row their boyfriend’s tank, you want to go to your grand­moth­er’s house for food be­cause your wife ex­pects you to eat left­over pelau, you re­quest­ing a cur­few pass be­cause your girl­friend put you out, cur­few pass­es be­cause your grand­moth­er lives 12 hous­es down the road, to eat, you want a pass to go home be­cause you are present­ly by your part­ner’s wife house, re­quest­ing a pass to take a lit­tle break from your wife, re­quest­ing a pass to go out­side be­cause you can­not sleep,” Grif­fith said.

He said these ridicu­lous rea­sons will not earn any­one a cur­few pass. Grif­fith said those wish­ing to pick up or drop off med­ical staff and those with med­ical emer­gen­cies, among oth­ers, are be­ing grant­ed tem­po­rary pass­es.

In­spec­tor Ashraf Ali of the Op­er­a­tion Com­mand Cen­tre said the tem­po­rary pass­es are on­ly valid for a few hours on the night it was re­quest­ed. He said the pass­es are sent via What­sApp so they can be shown to po­lice in the event the per­son us­ing it is stopped.

Ali said to date, 287 tem­po­rary pass­es have been grant­ed.

He said up un­til yes­ter­day, 307 po­lice of­fi­cers have test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 and ac­cord­ing to da­ta re­leased by the TTPS, a to­tal of 906 po­lice of­fi­cers have test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus since the start of the pan­dem­ic.

The da­ta from the TTPS al­so stat­ed that 13 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed for breach­ing the cur­few from Sun­day night in­to Mon­day morn­ing and 43 peo­ple re­ceived tick­ets for face masks.

Mean­while, Ali gave sta­tis­tics on the num­ber of po­lice of­fi­cers who have been vac­ci­nat­ed to date.

“Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,000 po­lice of­fi­cers and not po­lice of­fi­cers alone but mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice who are civil­ian em­ploy­ees, so it’s a com­bi­na­tion be­cause the civil­ian em­ploy­ees are al­so af­fect­ed with our COVID num­bers,” Ali said.