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For­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Gary Grif­fith has at­trib­uted the se­vere traf­fic con­ges­tion in and around Ch­aguara­mas fol­low­ing the “Stink n Dut­ty” fete to a lack of lead­er­ship, plan­ning and op­er­a­tional man­age­ment, rather than fail­ures by fete pro­mot­ers or rank-and-file po­lice of­fi­cers. Grif­fith said con­cerns raised by res­i­dents and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty were un­der­stand­able but ar­gued that many pa­trons re­port­ed see­ing few po­lice of­fi­cers sta­tioned at known bot­tle­neck ar­eas, along with an ap­par­ent ab­sence of se­nior su­per­vi­so­ry ranks di­rect­ing traf­fic dur­ing crit­i­cal pe­ri­ods.

He added that en­force­ment ap­peared to dis­si­pate once the event end­ed, de­spite hun­dreds of mo­torists con­tin­u­ing to ex­it the area well in­to the fol­low­ing af­ter­noon. Grif­fith said the sit­u­a­tion was par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­ap­point­ing giv­en that fetes have tak­en place in Ch­aguara­mas for decades and that large crowds can be man­aged ef­fec­tive­ly with prop­er lead­er­ship, co­or­di­na­tion and ev­i­dence-based traf­fic plan­ning.

He said such events can ben­e­fit busi­ness­es through in­creased pa­tron­age if ef­fec­tive man­age­ment sys­tems are im­ple­ment­ed. Draw­ing on his tenure as com­mis­sion­er of po­lice, Grif­fith said traf­fic man­age­ment for ma­jor events was nev­er left to chance and re­lied on ad­vance an­a­lyt­i­cal as­sess­ments to iden­ti­fy his­tor­i­cal grid­lock points along the West­ern Main Road and sur­round­ing ar­eas.