The new mantra be­ing preached by gov­ern­ment to cit­i­zens in­volved in non-es­sen­tial ac­tiv­i­ties is to “STAY SAFE, STAY HOME.”

Yes­ter­day, gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials held their first vir­tu­al news con­fer­ence to up­date the pub­lic on the COVID-19 cas­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Jour­nal­ists ac­cessed the event on­line and ei­ther mes­saged or called in their ques­tions as part of the gov­ern­ment’s dri­ve for safe dis­tanc­ing, an es­sen­tial el­e­ment in pre­vent­ing the spread of the un­seen virus caus­ing COVID-19 to spread like wild­fire across the globe.

Yes­ter­day, T&T’s cas­es stood at 82 peo­ple with three deaths linked to the virus.

In an ef­fort to curb the virus’ spread, the gov­ern­ment has put all non-es­sen­tial ser­vices in a state of “dor­man­cy.” Both Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh have urged cit­i­zens to stay home to pro­tect them­selves and the so­ci­ety dur­ing the ini­tial phase.

The irony is that even as this plea was made to the cit­i­zen­ry, a small group of po­lice of­fi­cers and sol­diers charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the safe­ty of cit­i­zens and coun­try dur­ing the pe­ri­od, mis­be­hav­ing in the worse way pos­si­ble.

They tar­get­ed home­less men who did not have any­where to go as the mid­night stay-at-home or­der kicked in. They forced these in­di­vid­u­als, un­doubt­ed­ly the most vul­ner­a­ble at this time, to un­der­take some de­spi­ca­ble acts in or­der to avoid “get­ting ah case.” They laughed as they ter­rorised their tar­gets and record­ed each in­ci­dent. What pa­thet­i­cal­ly dis­gust­ing be­hav­iour from these sol­diers.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who was not at yes­ter­day’s news brief­ing, con­demned the in­ap­pro­pri­ate be­hav­iour by cer­tain mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF). He has called on the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and Chief of De­fence Staff to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter.

There is no doubt the TTPS and the TTDF have im­por­tant roles to play dur­ing this pe­ri­od. These are se­ri­ous times for the coun­try and the world. If all of us are be­ing called to do our parts and make sac­ri­fices in so do­ing, then so too must those charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect and serve.

If we un­der­stand how im­por­tant the fight against COVID-19 is, we will al­so know why each of us must obey the or­der. And we dare say that if law en­force­ment mis­be­haves at this ear­ly junc­ture, they will not have the moral ground on which to de­mand the pub­lic does the same at this crit­i­cal time.

So just as the heavy hand of the law came down on a bar own­er found to have breached the Pub­lic Health Act last week­end, these law en­force­ment of­fi­cers, af­ter a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion, should al­so be made to pay for breach­ing the pub­lic’s trust. Any­thing less will tell the pop­u­la­tion that the gov­ern­ment is not as se­ri­ous about send­ing the right sig­nals to all who mis­be­have dur­ing this crit­i­cal pe­ri­od in the fight to rid the coun­try of COVID-19.