And while that incident occurred on January 2nd, the police were out in full force on New Year's Eve. That's because the Commissioner called out several establishments for advertising illegal social events. But none of them were actually shut down since, according to the ComPol, he sent his officers to speak with the proprietors first, to ensure that they knew to follow the COVID protocols. But while those public places remained open, the police did have to shut down a private wedding reception. ComPol explained that while they had permission for the wedding from the Ministry of Health - there was nothing about an accompanying reception.
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"We were proactive in our approach and I always believe that it is best to prevent something than to stop it when its already happening and so what I did was to direct the commanders across the country to visit these establishments that were advertising these events and to tell them that they will not be allowed to have these events and that worked out for us. So based on that these places that had these advertisements never did have those events and what I also directed is that police monitored them in the event that they would still have wanted to host them. Now you have places like Shisha that has a restaurant licensed and so they supposed to operate like a restaurant, but there is still this issue where many of these night bars are masquerading as restaurants and it is something we are looking at and we are hoping that we would be able to get the cooperation of the liquor licensing board to address these issues."
Reporter
"What about any personal private parties that people had? were any of those caught and shutdown?"
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"Well, I know we shut down a wedding reception in Cotton Tree Village. I had received information that there was a reception of a wedding at D's Cools Spot. Yes, they had received permission from the Ministry of Health to have a wedding and the permission that they got did not say to have a wedding reception and people have to understand that. So, the Ministry of Health gave them permission to have a wedding with 56 persons all of whom were fully vaccinated. The Ministry of Health also provided a list of those persons who were approved to be at this wedding and conditions were laid down and one of the conditions was that all attendees must wear mask and must practice social distance, but the reception that they had, people were not wearing mask because they were drinking, they were not social distancing because they were dancing and based on that I directed the police to go and close it down, because they were in clear violation of the covid19 regulation and more so in violation of the permission that they had received from Ministry of Health."
