Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Gary Grif­fith, says nei­ther he, nor the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), "reignit­ed the Com­mu­ni­ty Com­fort Pa­trols (CCP)".

The Com­mis­sion­er sought to clar­i­fy the mat­ter In an of­fi­cial state­ment is­sued to­day, in di­rect re­sponse to a head­line in a dai­ly news­pa­per, “COP Grif­fith reignites 2014 CCP Ini­tia­tive”,

Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith as­serts the head­line is to­tal­ly in­ac­cu­rate and that the TTPS did not make such a re­quest, nor does it have the au­thor­i­ty and the fund­ing for such a project.  

The top cop ex­plains that the ini­tia­tive as an­nounced yes­ter­day where­by four pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies will pa­trol cer­tain neigh­bour­hoods for the next month—and which has since been can­celled—was a pol­i­cy draft­ed by the Gov­ern­ment.

“The TTPS car­ries out Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy and we will make the best use of any pol­i­cy to en­sure that crim­i­nal el­e­ments do not use this pe­ri­od of the COVID-19 cri­sis to car­ry out their il­le­gal acts,” the Com­mis­sion­er states.  “At the mo­ment, the TTPS is re­spon­si­ble for car­ry­ing out the pol­i­cy de­ci­sions made in the Reg­u­la­tions of the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance, to en­sure that cit­i­zens ad­here to what is nec­es­sary as we fight this in­vis­i­ble virus.”

He added: “Our of­fi­cers are on the front­line as we en­sure that there are no breach­es to the reg­u­la­tions. As you would note, there was cause to ar­rest and charge three bar own­ers for op­er­at­ing their busi­ness­es de­spite the en­force­ment of the Reg­u­la­tions. Al­though there is a list of non-es­sen­tial busi­ness­es, we are still see­ing too many peo­ple on the roads, many of whom re­al­ly have no busi­ness be­ing out there.”