Head of the TTPS’ Le­gal Unit, Chris­t­ian Chan­dler said em­ploy­ers who are forc­ing their em­ploy­ees to breach the State of Emer­gency reg­u­la­tions and pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions can now be re­port­ed.

In fact, he said po­lice of­fi­cers have al­ready had to warn some about ad­her­ence to the reg­u­la­tions.

Speak­ing at the news con­fer­ence host­ed by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day, Chan­dler said the po­lice ser­vice was keep­ing an eye on em­ploy­ers.

He said that peo­ple who can work from home but were be­ing forced to go to work by the em­ploy­er un­der the threat of ter­mi­na­tion can file writ­ten re­ports to the po­lice.

He added po­lice of­fi­cers have al­ready vis­it­ed em­ploy­ers to in­ves­ti­gate.

“Em­ploy­ers were warned that if they were breach­ing the reg­u­la­tions, they would be charged.”

Chan­dler ad­vised such to re­port em­ploy­ers via the COVID hot­line 74COVID and/or the email co­vid­in­fo@ttps.gov.tt

This ini­tia­tive was tak­ing place even though the TTPS is cur­rent­ly chal­lenged as 800 of­fi­cers are said to be in quar­an­tine, how­ev­er, DCP Op­er­a­tions Er­la Christo­pher is as­sur­ing po­lice of­fi­cers will be out in full force.

Christo­pher said: “We con­tin­ue to main­tain vis­i­bil­i­ty and vig­i­lance in ar­eas of com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties, pa­trols in res­i­den­tial ar­eas and strate­gic road­block op­er­a­tions.”

It was al­so dis­closed by ACP Wen­dell Williams that 136 of­fi­cers test­ed pos­i­tive for the COVID-19 virus.

Williams added that the num­ber of staff re­sum­ing du­ty since quar­an­tine stood at 2,491 of­fi­cers and 67 civil­ian staff.

Christo­pher thanked her four re­gion­al As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACPs) and nine di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders for “suc­cess­ful­ly man­ag­ing the day to day op­er­a­tions over the last year.”

“Ob­vi­ous­ly as we go in­to the SoE we are in the process of tweak­ing our op­er­a­tions as you would have heard we are chal­lenged by the num­ber of of­fi­cers on quar­an­tine. How­ev­er, I want to as­sure the pub­lic that we are man­ag­ing our re­sources and are shift­ing our staff as re­quired to main­tain a work­able bal­ance,” Christo­pher said.

“ As we seek to en­sure pub­lic com­pli­ance with our reg­u­la­tions, I would like to as­sure the pub­lic that the po­lice will op­er­ate un­der the con­fines of the law,” she added.

Christo­pher al­so took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­mind the gen­er­al pub­lic that the TTPS an­tic­i­pates the co­op­er­a­tion of the gen­er­al pub­lic, “Di­vi­sion­al and sta­tion com­man­ders will en­sure neigh­bour­hood watch groups are op­er­at­ing and mak­ing use of avail­able tech­nol­o­gy. We will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor per­sons on quar­an­tine.”