Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said yes­ter­day that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 75 of­fi­cers are be­ing close­ly mon­i­tored by po­lice for sus­pect­ed crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Grif­fith told the me­dia yes­ter­day that since 2014, some 171 of­fi­cers have been ar­rest­ed for be­ing in­volved in crim­i­nal con­duct. In a What­sapp mes­sage, the com­mis­sion­er al­so ex­pand­ed say­ing there were cur­rent­ly 282 of­fi­cers on sus­pen­sion and 24 in prison.

Mean­while, de­spite po­lice clos­ing fraud in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) Ir­win Hack­shaw fol­low­ing al­leged sus­pi­cious fi­nan­cial ac­tiv­i­ty, he’s not en­tire­ly off the hook yet.

Dis­play­ing three large binders of re­search at a press brief­ing yes­ter­day, act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Jayson Forde re­it­er­at­ed that their in­ves­ti­ga­tions did not un­cov­er any crim­i­nal li­a­bil­i­ties for Hack­shaw.

Grif­fith al­so made clear that a po­lice of­fi­cer pos­sess­ing large fi­nan­cial as­sets does not crim­i­nalise the of­fi­cer. He ex­plained that its the pos­ses­sion of such wealth with­out a valid rea­son that does.

“We on­ly work on ev­i­dence. I find it very in­ter­est­ing when per­sons au­to­mat­i­cal­ly la­bel a po­lice of­fi­cer be­cause that per­son may have two mil­lion dol­lars in their ac­count,” Grif­fith said while ex­plain­ing that it was pos­si­ble for an of­fi­cer to be wealthy such as through in­her­i­tance or sell­ing of ap­pre­ci­at­ing as­sets such as land.

How­ev­er, Grif­fith ex­plained that the can al­ways be re­opened once new in­for­ma­tion comes to light- as is done with oth­er cas­es.

“If at any­time any­one has in­for­ma­tion to ver­i­fy we can re­open this cas­es and that they feel there is some­thing we can jus­ti­fy- we would do so,” he said.

The com­mis­sion­er al­so went fur­ther to im­plore mem­bers of the pub­lic to come for­ward with any in­for­ma­tion on po­lice of­fi­cers who may be en­gaged in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

“I ask any mem­ber of the pub­lic please come for­ward, bring to me or you can make it pub­lic that you know for a fact that any in­di­vid­ual whether its this deputy com­mis­sion­er or any po­lice of­fi­cer is in­volved in wrong­do­ing, crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, you have in­for­ma­tion- bring it to us,” he said.

The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) in a re­lease yes­ter­day said their in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing and up­on com­ple­tion, “the Au­thor­i­ty shall where deemed nec­es­sary, take ac­tion in ac­cor­dance with the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty Act.”

“The PCA con­sid­ers this a very se­ri­ous mat­ter and is work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to com­plete this in­ves­ti­ga­tion as it could po­ten­tial­ly have se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions for the se­nior of­fi­cer in­volved,” the re­lease said.

Hack­shaw was al­leged­ly flagged back in March by three fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions for close to $2 mil­lion in sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty fol­low­ing de­posits in­to over 15 per­son­al ac­counts dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2014-2019.