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Monday, August 18, 2025

Nizam: Griffith has no power to fire rogue cops

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20140102

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith does not have the pow­er to fire or hire any po­lice of­fi­cers, whether "rogue" or not.In fact, the pow­er to fire, hire or pro­mote a po­lice of­fi­cer nev­er lay with any na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter. That pow­er re­sides with the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice and pre­vi­ous­ly with the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC)."Per­haps the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty could tell us who gave him the pow­er to fire rogue po­lice of­fi­cers," said for­mer chair­man of the PSC Nizam Mo­hammed dur­ing an in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

In yes­ter­day's Guardian, Grif­fith was quot­ed as say­ing he in­tend­ed to trans­form na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty struc­ture and fire rogue po­lice of­fi­cers."We seem to be go­ing around in cir­cles," Mo­hammed said. "Why haven't they dis­cussed in a mean­ing­ful way one of the prob­lems which the par­lia­men­tar­i­ans pushed me in­to ac­knowl­edg­ing at a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee, and that is, the lack of morale in the Po­lice Ser­vice?" He said politi­cians had in­stead ini­ti­at­ed a mob re­ac­tion to the myr­i­ad of prob­lems faced by the Po­lice Ser­vice.

"The Po­lice Ser­vice is not over­bur­dened with rogue cops," he said.Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal al­so said yes­ter­day ac­cord­ing to the Con­sti­tu­tion, Grif­fith had no au­thor­i­ty to fire any of­fi­cers."The com­mis­sion­er of po­lice has com­plete pow­er to man­age the Po­lice Ser­vice and he would have the pow­er to fire of­fi­cers," she said."Be­fore that, it was the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the PSC."

She said as it stood, the PSC had pow­ers to mon­i­tor the ef­fi­cien­cy of the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice and al­so held an ap­pel­late func­tion in the event of an of­fi­cer de­cid­ing to ap­peal dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion."The min­is­ter's pow­er deals with pol­i­cy and the leg­is­la­tion," See­ta­hal said.Ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 123 A of the Con­sti­tu­tion, the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice "shall have the pow­er to ap­point per­sons to hold or act in of­fice in the Po­lice Ser­vice," in­clud­ing the pow­er to make ap­point­ments or pro­mo­tions and to con­firm ap­point­ments.

The act al­so says the com­mis­sion­er has the pow­er to trans­fer any po­lice of­fi­cer and re­move from of­fice and ex­er­cise dis­ci­pli­nary con­trol over po­lice of­fi­cers.Yes­ter­day, head of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) Gillian Lucky told the Guardian she was ex­pect­ing to meet with Grif­fith some time next week.She said dur­ing this meet­ing Grif­fith's state­ment would be dis­cussed, in ad­di­tion to leg­is­la­tion to give teeth to the PCA.


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