COMMISSIONER of Police Gary Griffith is advising the public to ignore social media posts which are false and which can cause unnecessary panic among the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago.
In a release on Thursday, Griffith listed three recent instances where these so-called anonymous social media security sources posted inaccurate information via WhatsApp and videos.
In the first instance, there was a video posted which showed illegal immigrants running onto the shore, saying it could have been Los Iros, Moruga, Cedros and Icacos. It turned out to be nationals of the Dominican Republic entering Puerto Rico, the release stated.
In the second instance, social media was abuzz with information that the prime minister was going to implement a State of Emergency long before he hosted his media conference on May 3. This turned out to be false, the release stated.
In the third incident, a man who claimed to be an insider within the Ministry of National Security, posted audio within the past 24 hours saying he came out of a meeting at the Ministry of National Security with the Telecommunications Department and that the Covid situation was very bad. He even advised people to panic buy. The CoP says there was no such meeting, the it stated.
According to Griffith, these three incidents could have the effect of creating fear among the population and causing panic buying across the country.
He said, “This would cause the officers of the TTPS to respond to unnecessary matters when they could have been performing their normal activities.”
Griffith called on the public to ignore these false social media posts. He asked the public not to forward these messages as this could cause further panic among the population.
He said to only accept information relating to the Covid-19 pandemic from official sources, such as the Ministry of Health and bulletins from the TTPS.
