Jensen La Vende

While the con­tro­ver­sial leak­age of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) doc­u­ment con­firms the rein­tro­duc­tion of a rogue polic­ing unit–the New Fly­ing Squad–Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Gary Grif­fith said noth­ing can be done at this time to any­one im­pli­cat­ed in the re­port and to who may be un­der his lead­er­ship.

Speak­ing with the me­dia at the end of an in­ter­faith ser­vice held at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) Port-of-Spain for mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices who died in the line of du­ty, Grif­fith said no ac­tion can be tak­en against any­one from his lev­el since no gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial re­ceived a copy of the doc­u­ment, which was sent to the of­fices of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

"If you have any in­for­ma­tion I am re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to get­ting it be­cause at this time no gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial has re­ceived any cor­re­spon­dence what­so­ev­er from po­lice, PCA or DPP. It would not be ap­pro­pri­ate to take any ac­tion at this time and the DPP is quite right he has his job and I have mine" Grif­fith said.At a func­tion on Thurs­day DPP Roger Gas­pard said he was not con­cerned about the leak of the doc­u­ment but the con­tent and he would be fo­cus­ing on that.

Grif­fith re­it­er­at­ed his call for the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of doc­u­ments which he said would pre­vent fur­ther leaks of sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion. "I have my job to do which is to pre­vent leaks and to en­sure that clas­si­fi­ca­tion of doc­u­ments and crit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion is giv­en to in­di­vid­u­als on a need to know ba­sis and they have that pro­fes­sion­al­ism not to abuse that po­si­tion but to use it in the right man­ner and the DPP has his to job to do which is to deal with in­ves­ti­ga­tion" Grif­fith said.

In a me­dia re­lease on Wednes­day Grif­fith said the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of doc­u­ments would be cat­e­gorised in­to "top se­cret", "con­fi­den­tial" and "re­strict­ed". The re­lease added that doc­u­ments of an ad­min­is­tra­tive na­ture, which may not jus­ti­fy a se­cu­ri­ty clas­si­fi­ca­tion but should be pro­tect­ed from the ca­su­al ob­serv­er, will be clas­si­fied as "staff in con­fi­dence", "med­ical in con­fi­dence" and "con­tract in con­fi­dence".

Grif­fith said the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of doc­u­ments is a world wide thing and he ap­plauds whis­tle blow­ers as they un­earth gov­ern­ment mis­con­duct."I al­ready spoke of whis­tle blow­ers, I ap­plaud that, we need whis­tle blow­ers to en­sure that the gov­ern­ment or the state is not cov­er­ing some­thing il­le­gal."This mat­ter has noth­ing to do with whis­tle blow­ing this mat­ter has to do with in­di­vid­u­als who have breached that lev­el of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty and passed on in­for­ma­tion that they should not have" he added.

Grif­fith added that clas­si­fy­ing in­for­ma­tion would iden­ti­fy those who are en­e­mies of the state who breach their ought and leak in­for­ma­tion. He said it was not a case of hid­ing in­for­ma­tion but en­sur­ing that sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion per­tain­ing to mat­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty that can af­fect the na­tion's se­cu­ri­ty can­not be breached. Grif­fith said that leaked doc­u­ment was at it's high­est a re­strict­ed doc­u­ment be­cause it did not af­fect na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.