It’s been a few days of who’s to blame over what pow­ers the po­lice have to charge per­sons breach­ing the COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions at pri­vate gath­er­ings in the wake of a pool par­ty at Bay­side Tow­ers last week.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is not one who lets any­thing pass. He jumped to his of­fi­cers’ de­fence on Sun­day, hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley told the po­lice, in no un­cer­tain terms, that the full brunt of the law must be ap­plied across the board, re­gard­less of race, colour, creed, class, or so­cial stand­ing, to per­sons in breach.

Mr Grif­fith went on the de­fen­sive, go­ing so far as to ac­cuse the Prime Min­is­ter of push­ing a race nar­ra­tive. Sad that deal­ing with mea­sures to curb the virus’ spread should come to this.

The re­al­i­ty is that there is a miss­ing link. Is it that con­trary to what the PM’s un­der­stand­ing is, the po­lice can­not go in­to a pri­vate space to charge some­one breach­ing the reg­u­la­tions and putting oth­ers at risk? If the reg­u­la­tions don’t al­low for this, then sure­ly there is a need for new leg­is­la­tion to be tak­en to par­lia­ment to ad­dress the con­cerns of law en­force­ment of­fi­cers.

How­ev­er, the pub­lic squab­bling be­tween these two top of­fice­hold­ers on­ly adds to the con­fu­sion for the very pub­lic whose in­ter­ests they are there to serve.

Yes­ter­day, in an ef­fort one hopes was to clar­i­fy the is­sue, the Of­fice of Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith and his se­niors had been sum­moned to a meet­ing where all the is­sues were ap­par­ent­ly thrashed out in the best in­ter­est of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Quite frankly, Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith needs to stop the pub­lic “to­ing and fro­ing” and see­ing every­one as his en­e­my.

The fact is the coun­try be­lieves he can bring crime down. But while it may be true the Com­mis­sion­er has re­ceived good rat­ings, his be­hav­iour in of­fice at times leaves much to be de­sired.

Mr Grif­fith needs to take it down and do what he has been hired to do, which is to de­vel­op a plan for the coun­try’s se­cu­ri­ty in con­junc­tion with the oth­er Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty heads and to keep all of us safe dur­ing the cur­rent pan­dem­ic.

It is there­fore grat­i­fy­ing to hear that yes­ter­day’s meet­ing was “very cor­dial” and that the em­pha­sis will now be on all par­ties mov­ing for­ward to en­sure the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance reg­u­la­tions are ad­hered to by the pub­lic. That is what we need more now than pub­lic bick­er­ing. We need to know that if some cit­i­zens do the wrong thing they will be called to ac­count for it, whether it is through warn­ings, fines or oth­er means via oth­er laws on the books. Pub­lic and pri­vate spaces at a time like this must be treat­ed with equal vigour be­cause those who gath­er at pri­vate events even­tu­al­ly make their way in­to the pub­lic do­main and put every­one at risk. This is too se­ri­ous a time for any­one to be al­lowed to get away with stu­pid­i­ty. The coun­try can­not risk it.