A failure to meet the “evidential threshold required” by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions has resulted in the closure of the “majority” of quarantine breach investigations, police have confirmed.
In response to Compass queries regarding the status of 20 quarantine investigations announced by Commissioner of Police Derek Byrne at a press conference last month, police said the “majority” had been closed.
Closing the investigation means those cases will not come to court.
In the September press conference, Byrne said 52 suspected isolation breaches had been reported in August, of which 20 were serious enough to warrant police investigations.
The police told the Compass that two quarantine breach cases had been registered at court earlier this week and that, currently, there are 38 active cases under investigation..
Seven alleged breaches were reported over one weekend in mid-September, shortly after Cayman confirmed its first locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 in over a year.
At the end of September, a police investigation was launched, after a George Town Primary School parent was accused of allegedly breaching quarantine.
Breaches of quarantine carry a maximum penalty of $10,000 and/or two years in prison, if convicted.
The most high-profile conviction for breach of quarantine to date occurred in December last year, when American Skylar Mack and Caymanian Vanjae Ramgeet were sentenced to two months in prison.
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Breach of quarantine/self isolation is too common and the reason we are suffering the current explosion in new cases. Closing all these “investigations” will only exacerbate the current crisis.
So the fact you have a witness to someone breaching quarantine is not suffice for a fine, leaves you to realize how impotent our court and police system is.
All to often the police say it’s too hard to get enough evidence to bother going to court so they just don’t even try to enforce laws.
Everyday in traffics you see the police driving but don’t stop, warn or even try stop traffic offenders. Their apathy combined with some of our communities ignorant approach to covid is why we have a social spread and why we have so many deaths from traffic violations.
A little discipline and enforcement goes a long way to encourage good behavior in a community