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Monday, August 25, 2025

Griffith: State witnesses must ask for protection

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Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Gary Grif­fith says there is noth­ing wrong with this coun­try's wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme and be­ing a state wit­ness does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly mean you are part of the pro­gramme.An­swer­ing ques­tions about the ef­fec­tive­ness of T&T's wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme in light of the death of state wit­ness Sta­cy Roopan, Grif­fith said there was a dif­fer­ence be­tween state wit­ness and wit­ness pro­tec­tion.

"Our wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme, there has been...no one has been killed in the wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme for sev­er­al years. So the wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme is work­ing," he said yes­ter­day in an in­ter­view af­ter speak­ing at the draft­ing work­shop for a new na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty pol­i­cy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine.He added that it was un­known whether Roopan's mur­der was "based on the ac­tu­al mat­ter where she was a state wit­ness," and there need­ed to be a prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion to ver­i­fy.

On Mon­day, less than two months af­ter an in­trud­er broke in­to Roopan's car and left her a death threat, the Cou­va moth­er of one was gunned down out­side her son's preschool.In a pre­vi­ous re­port, one of Roopan's rel­a­tives said last De­cem­ber some­one broke in­to Roopan's car, stole her per­son­al doc­u­ments and left a hand­writ­ten note on her car seat, warn­ing that if she were to tes­ti­fy in an on­go­ing court mat­ter she would be killed.

On Mon­day, when she ar­rived at the school, a white car pulled up and a gun­man shot her six times, then sped off. Roopan was hit in the head and up­per body and died on the spot. Grif­fith said: "I know when peo­ple hear the per­son is a state wit­ness there's an au­to­mat­ic con­cern that the State is not do­ing enough...The State can on­ly pro­vide wit­ness pro­tec­tion if the per­son is will­ing and sends for­ward a re­quest.

"What I have to do and con­tin­ue to do is put mech­a­nisms in place–poli­cies, not crime plans–to en­sure per­sons who are will­ing to come for­ward and give in­for­ma­tion that can be turned to ev­i­dence, and it can then be used for suc­cess­ful con­vic­tion," he said.He said sys­tems like Vir­tu­al Po­lice Of­fi­cer (Vipo) would give peo­ple the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pass on in­for­ma­tion safe­ly, with­out any con­cern for reprisal.

"This is what we need bad­ly. We need to bridge that gap be­tween the po­lice and the cit­i­zens. To take away that fear, for them to have that trust with the law en­force­ment of­fi­cials, and to give that in­for­ma­tion. That in­for­ma­tion is crit­i­cal for us to re­move the so-called rogue el­e­ments in our so­ci­ety, once and for all."


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