Earlier in the news, we showed you a snippet of Winston Tanga James' funeral - which, as we mentioned, was attended by hundreds of his family and friends.
And in normal times, a funeral that large would be fine, but we're still in a pandemic and the regulations state that such a gathering is against the law.
But there were police officers at the event who simply stood by and let the crowd converge.
According to ASP Fitzroy Yearwood, once an event is sanctioned by the Ministry of Health, the police cannot intervene. But the gathering wasn't the only law being broken since there was also public drinking. But Yearwood said that if the officers went in, it would have made a bad situation worse, so they preferred to sit it out. Here's how he put it:
ASP Fitzroy Yearwood
"That question would be best answered by the ministry of health, because in all honesty covid19 is health issue. We at the police department are dealing with the enforcement of the law when it comes to the aspect of the law, but we cannot stop people from mourning their loved ones if the ministry is allowing that. You the general public, you owe it to your family and to yourself to stay safe and healthy and when you go there and you involve yourself in these irresponsible kind of behaviour and these clusters that you put yourselves in, we at the police department can only do so much. For us to go in a situation like that lets say at a funeral where there are hundreds of people and you only have a deployment of so much police, that situation could turn volatile and then it could turned worst. So what we try to do is try to distance the people, try to talk to them."
Reporter
"Even if you don't want to address the amount of people attending the funeral, the issue of public drinking, the issue of smoking weed on the streets, that's other violations that the police should enforce."
ASP Fitzroy Yearwood
"Thats up to the officers on the ground to deal with these breaking of the law in their presence. I cannot answer for those officers out there, but we instilled that they do their job with due diligence. If this is being done in your presence and you took an oath to protect and served, and you don't do your job, then that's negligence on your part."
