And while the Coast Guard will keep cracking down on crime on the seas, the police are cracking down on COVID violators here on land. This weekend, Barefoot Bar in Placencia was full to capacity - and then some, by the looks of these videos. It's a major COVID concern and the ComPol told us today that the owner of the bar was taken into custody.
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"Everyday I listen to people bashing the government, bashing the Ministry of Health, bashing the police about COVID 19 or COVID infections or saying that the numbers are so high but the question is, what are we doing to mitigate the numbers? The Ministry of Health, the government or the police are not the ones conducting these parties and yes as much as we try to identify the location of these parties and disrupt them and make arrests, there are some that are encouraged discreetly that we don't know about and it is these irresponsible and selfish behavior of the few that have us in the predicament that we're in. The sad part is that people do foolishness and the wrong people get blamed for it. As a society we need to start to point the fingers and blame where they rightfully belong. As a police department we continue to work towards achieving the objective of the CVID 19 regulations. The one in Placencia, Barefoot, I think that's the name of the bar, the owner was arrested and will be appearing at court today because we got information about it, we went there, we saw the party and she was arrested and she will be appearing in court today."
Courtney Menzies:
"Did police break up the party?"
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"Yes."
Reporter:
"For those instances when you don't find out about the event until after it took place can you still go based on evidence?"
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"Yes if I have the video footage and we can prove a date for when it happened, certainly I can go after them."
Reporter:
"What about participants because there are other events over the weekend?"
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"You see to go after the participants, it's so much, we will not be able to capture all of them so in this instance only the owner was charged and I think police did issue tickets for some of the persons inside who were not wearing masks."
