Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith in­sists it is “ab­solute mad­ness” for any­one in au­thor­i­ty to con­tend that a gang mem­ber with­out pend­ing crim­i­nal charges can con­tin­ue re­ceiv­ing State con­tracts, os­ten­si­bly chal­leng­ing a state­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that it is sole­ly the du­ty of the Po­lice Ser­vice to bring down crim­i­nal gangs.

Grif­fith dou­bled down on his po­si­tion on Fri­day as he re­spond­ed to the ar­gu­ment that po­lice try­ing to crack down on gang vi­o­lence should gath­er ev­i­dence to charge gang mem­bers un­der the An­ti-Gang Act.

Grif­fith has re­peat­ed­ly called out the State for fund­ing crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es by giv­ing gang lead­ers lu­cra­tive con­tracts for in­fra­struc­ture projects.

Po­lice have blamed gang vi­o­lence for the re­cent surge in homi­cides.

As the mur­der count bar­rels to­ward 300, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) yes­ter­day con­firmed that 19 peo­ple were killed be­tween Sun­day and yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

The com­mis­sion­er said the po­lice should not be sin­gled out for what per­sons in lead­er­ship fail to do.

“It is ab­solute mad­ness that any­body that holds a po­si­tion of au­thor­i­ty could feel that by giv­ing crim­i­nal el­e­ments funds and mon­ey that you feel you could ac­tu­al­ly be Pon­tius Pi­late, turn a blind eye, and throw blame on the Po­lice Ser­vice. I will not in any way have any­one throw blame on the Po­lice Ser­vice when they are not do­ing their job,” Grif­fith said dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

“You do not try to feed an en­e­my and then af­ter tell law en­force­ment to deal with the en­e­my,” the com­mis­sion­er said.

At the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was asked to re­spond to the con­tents of a Spe­cial Branch re­port which said sev­en gang lead­ers had ben­e­fit­ed from mul­ti-mil­lion con­tracts from two re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions con­trolled by the in­cum­bent Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.

Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment is “not go­ing to get in­volved” in the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the TTPS to gath­er ev­i­dence and charge gang mem­bers. He said gov­ern­ment passed the An­ti-Gang law in Par­lia­ment to make mem­ber­ship in a gang a crim­i­nal of­fence, giv­ing the TTPS the leg­isla­tive tool to bring gang lead­ers to book.

He said if there is in­for­ma­tion that some­one is a gang mem­ber, “then they should be charged. And not be­ing charged for get­ting a con­tract but be­ing charged for be­ing in­volved in gang ac­tiv­i­ty.” He stopped short of ad­dress­ing whether some­one sus­pect­ed of be­ing a gang leader should be re­ceiv­ing funds from the State.

Grif­fith said yes­ter­day he did not want to re­spond to the Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments.

But he in­sist­ed, “There will be civil­ians who will not un­der­stand law en­force­ment. Be­cause some­one is in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty it does not mean that you can eas­i­ly ar­rest them.

“A civil­ian will not un­der­stand the dif­fer­ence be­tween in­for­ma­tion, in­tel­li­gence and ev­i­dence, so telling peo­ple, ‘Well, you know who the crim­i­nals are, so ar­rest them.’ it does not make any sense.”

The com­mis­sion­er said gang lead­ers in­vest the rev­enue from State con­tracts in­to oth­er busi­ness­es. He said they al­so use the funds to buy-out of­fi­cials in the Ju­di­cia­ry and law en­force­ment, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to mount a suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion un­der the An­ti-Gang Act.

Grif­fith sits on the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, which is chaired by the Prime Min­is­ter. The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, who is the line min­is­ter for the TTPS, is al­so a mem­ber of the coun­cil.

Asked whether he has spo­ken di­rect­ly with Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young about yank­ing State con­tracts from the hands of gang lead­ers, Grif­fith said it would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate to com­ment on con­fi­den­tial com­mu­ni­ca­tions with the min­is­ter.

But Grif­fith did say the TTPS has giv­en the State “all in­for­ma­tion re­quired to show that the State is mak­ing it dif­fi­cult” for po­lice of­fi­cers to crack down on gang vi­o­lence.

“The State, through in­tel­li­gence, you can ver­i­fy that these in­di­vid­u­als have been in­stru­men­tal in crim­i­nal-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty. Why give them tax­pay­ers mon­ey through State con­tracts?” Grif­fith ques­tioned.

Does the com­mis­sion­er be­lieve mem­bers of gov­ern­ment are lis­ten­ing to his ap­peals?

“The ju­ry will be still out on that,” he replied.

Does he be­lieve he is be­ing set up to fail?

“I will con­tin­ue to do and say what is re­quired to make this a safe coun­try and if it falls in any­one’s gar­den, well, in lo­cal par­lance, it’s a hard luck,” he re­spond­ed.

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to the Prime Min­is­ter via What­sApp on Fri­day ask­ing why the State would wait for an of­fi­cial charge to redi­rect con­tracts away from peo­ple whom in­tel­li­gence sug­gests are in­volved in crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es.

He did not re­spond.