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Friday, July 11, 2025

75 cops on police radar for criminal activity

by

Rishard Khan
1869 days ago
20200529
DCP Jayson Forde addresses the media during yesterday’s TTPS briefing at the Police Administration Building

DCP Jayson Forde addresses the media during yesterday’s TTPS briefing at the Police Administration Building

KERWIN PIERRE

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.


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