Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar:

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith is to be com­mend­ed for his work in re­vi­tal­is­ing the fight against crime.

Af­ter years of in­ac­tiv­i­ty from the sev­er­al Min­is­ters of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty un­der this PNM Gov­ern­ment, it is heart­en­ing to see the com­mis­sion­er lead the TTPS in tak­ing the fight to the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.

In a few short months, the coun­try has seen vis­i­ble and sus­tained ef­forts from our law en­force­ment of­fi­cers un­der his lead­er­ship.

I wish him con­tin­ued suc­cess in lead­ing the TTPS in the fight against crime, and, to the restora­tion of many of the ini­tia­tives that were put in place or un­der de­vel­op­ment when he served in the ad­min­is­tra­tion, I led.

Stu­art Young, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty:

The Gov­ern­ment took a strate­gic de­ci­sion to sup­port Mr Gary Grif­fith’s ap­point­ment as the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, and un­der the lead­er­ship of the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter, sub­mit­ted to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives that we would sup­port his ap­point­ment as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. All of the gov­ern­ment MPs in the Low­er House vot­ed in sup­port of Gary Grif­fith and not a sin­gle one of the Op­po­si­tion MPs sup­port­ed Grif­fith’s ap­point­ment as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. He was good enough to be Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty but the UNC did not think Mr Grif­fith was good enough to be the coun­try’s Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. The Gov­ern­ment ap­point­ed Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith and the Prime Min­is­ter around the same time ap­point­ed me as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, and from his ap­point­ment to now, Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith and I have been work­ing very well to­geth­er.

Grif­fith has brought a new dy­nam­ic to the TTPS and for the first time in al­most six years the TTPS has per­ma­nent lead­er­ship at the helm and it has made an im­me­di­ate dif­fer­ence, just as this Gov­ern­ment knew it would.

It has been a plea­sure work­ing with Gary and I be­lieve that our re­la­tion­ship will make pos­i­tive dif­fer­ences to the fight against crime in T&T.

Grif­fith’s ad­di­tion to the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty team has made a dif­fer­ence. The TTPS hav­ing lead­er­ship and his no-non­sense and en­er­getic ap­proach com­bined with an in­sis­tence from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty that in­tel­li­gence and re­sources be shared and not siloed has pro­duced pos­i­tive re­sults.

I have seen a new en­er­gy and the morale ris­ing in the TTPS and I com­mend the men and women in the TTPS for the work that they do and their sup­port for Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith.

Gary’s en­er­gy, ex­pe­ri­ence, will­ing­ness to work as part of a team, fear­less­ness and de­sire to suc­ceed have pos­i­tive­ly im­pact­ed the fight against the scourge of crime. He is ful­ly com­mit­ted and wants to turn things around.

I be­lieve that the ef­fects of the shar­ing of in­tel­li­gence and oth­er re­sources com­bined with the use of more tech­nol­o­gy across the whole of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus will pro­duce ad­di­tion­al pos­i­tive re­sults; some of which have been seen in the past cou­ple of months.

The com­mis­sion­er and the TTPS that he leads have the full sup­port of the Gov­ern­ment, and in par­tic­u­lar my sup­port, and I look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to work with Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith and the men and women of the TTPS as we try to com­bat all types of crime and to take the fight to the crim­i­nals, in­clud­ing, the white col­lar crim­i­nals in the com­ing months and years.

Wayne Sturge—at­tor­ney and for­mer UNC sen­a­tor:

How do I rate his per­for­mance? Ask­ing me to rate his per­for­mance at this time is like ask­ing me to com­ment on a marathon af­ter the first half mile which makes me won­der whether this is the me­dia en­abling him in an­oth­er one of his PR spec­ta­cles, par­tic­u­lar­ly at a time when the pub­lic is ine­bri­at­ed with his big talk.

But I will give him full marks for PR and Rob­ber Talk, he un­der­stands the val­ue of that, per­cep­tion to most peo­ple is re­al­i­ty and the pub­lic can be for­giv­en as mobs are not known to en­gage in any kind of ob­jec­tive analy­sis.

He asked to be judged on the mur­der rate and if we are to take him up on that he has proven him­self an ab­ject and mis­er­able fail­ure. He has done noth­ing in terms of pre­ven­tion and with all his mouthing has not show­cased any­thing to sug­gest that he can sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­crease the de­tec­tion rate for mur­der.

As far as drug busts are con­cerned if you are not care­ful you may very well get the im­pres­sion that large and fre­quent raids are as a di­rect re­sult of his work and weren't hap­pen­ing be­fore.

Like­wise kid­nap­ping, he is al­ways there up front and cen­tre when there is a suc­cess, when the re­al­i­ty is that kid­nap­ping be­came large­ly de­funct since 2007/8 main­ly due to the ac­qui­si­tion of ad­vanced crime de­tec­tion tech­nol­o­gy which means that re­cent de­tec­tions have very lit­tle to do with him and more to do with the in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the AKU. But there are sev­er­al oth­er miss­ing per­sons whom we ei­ther nev­er find or who turn up dead, it would be good if he can up­date the me­dia about these with the same vigour and reg­u­lar­i­ty.

It is ob­vi­ous to those with so­bri­ety that his me­dia cir­cus is de­signed to take at­ten­tion away from his abysmal per­for­mance on the mur­der rate up­on which he asked to be judged. In this re­gard, I think the stark fail­ure of all pre­vi­ous po­lice com­mis­sion­ers is that they didn't turn up for pho­to ops for every sin­gle po­lice suc­cess.

In the end, I wish him well as an im­proved de­tec­tion rate ben­e­fits every­one.

FIX­IN T&T head, Kirk Wait­he:

The en­thu­si­asm brought to the of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice by Gary Grif­fith is to be wel­comed as a much-need­ed boost to the morale of po­lice of­fi­cers. The pub­lic’s sup­port for his ini­tia­tives is a mea­sure of the des­per­a­tion for safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty. That be­ing said, FIX­IN’ T&T is alarmed by the Com­mis­sion­er’s ex­ces­sive brava­do and lack of re­straint as ev­i­dent in ref­er­ences to in­di­vid­u­als as “cock­roach­es”, among oth­er things.

We ac­knowl­edge the suc­cess­ful ex­trac­tion of kid­nap vic­tims and the high pro­file seizures of drugs and guns in his first 90 days in of­fice but note that while CoP Grif­fith is the leader, face and voice of these suc­cess sto­ries, the grow­ing num­ber of miss­ing and mur­dered per­sons ap­pear to be for the ac­count of oth­er po­lice of­fi­cers.

FIX­IN' T&T ful­ly sup­ports CoP Grif­fith's po­si­tions on poly­graph test­ing with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice, ac­count­abil­i­ty for the care of ve­hi­cles and his ac­tions against al­leged rogue of­fi­cers. How­ev­er, FIX­IN' T&T takes se­ri­ous is­sue with the com­mis­sion­er’s propen­si­ty to pub­licly at­tack the char­ac­ter of any per­son or en­ti­ty even re­mote­ly crit­i­cal of his style and ex­e­cu­tion of du­ty.

While FIX­IN’ T&T is heart­ened by the CoP’s recog­ni­tion that safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty are of para­mount im­por­tance to all, we hope he will walk his talk by vig­or­ous­ly tack­ling the scourge of white-col­lar crime. We hold him to his promise to act against all wrong-do­ers re­gard­less of who and where they are and await the out­come of po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to a num­ber of mat­ters, in­clud­ing those which may in­volve par­lia­men­tar­i­ans Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, Faris Al-Rawi, Ro­han Sinanan and Ger­ald Ramdeen, to name a few. FIX­IN’ T&T hopes that these in­ves­ti­ga­tions are re­ceiv­ing the full sup­port of CoP Grif­fith as well as the re­quired re­sources.

FIX­IN’ T&T main­tains that there are many more good than bad ap­ples in our Po­lice Ser­vice. We re­main ready, will­ing and able to sup­port the fight against crime. FIX­IN’ T&T re­mains com­mit­ted to truth and will con­tin­ue to fear­less­ly hold all pub­lic of­fi­cials to the most strin­gent of stan­dards as we work ef­fec­tive­ly to­wards the re­al­i­sa­tion of a safe, se­cure, ef­fi­cient and pro­duc­tive T&T.

David West, di­rec­tor of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty:

The hold­er of the Of­fice of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice plays a cru­cial role in the main­te­nance of law and or­der in the coun­try and I of­fer my full sup­port to any­one com­mit­ted to this pur­pose. In Sep­tem­ber 2018 a team from the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet with new­ly ap­point­ed Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Mr Gary Grif­fith and se­nior mem­bers of the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau and Po­lice Com­plaints Di­vi­sion. Dur­ing this meet­ing a num­ber of is­sues that di­rect­ly af­fect­ed both the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and the PCA were re­viewed and both the Com­mis­sion­er and I agreed that is­sues rel­e­vant to both our op­er­a­tions will be ad­dressed in or­der to chart a way for­ward.

It is note­wor­thy that the com­mis­sion­er ap­pears to be se­ri­ous with re­gard to hold­ing er­rant of­fi­cers ac­count­able for their ac­tiv­i­ties and sub­se­quent­ly ad­min­is­ter­ing dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion by means of tri­bunals and oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tive ac­tions. In this way, the com­mis­sion­er seems to be re­cep­tive to rec­om­men­da­tions made by the PCA as per Sec­tion 21 (1) (d) of the PCA Act.

The com­mis­sion­er has ad­vo­cat­ed for the use of body worn (BWCs) and the in­tro­duc­tion of the use of non-lethal weapons with spe­cif­ic ref­er­ence to tasers and pep­per spray which I be­lieve are steps in the right di­rec­tion. In fact, the PCA has long been an ad­vo­cate for the use of BWCs since BWCs emerged as an im­por­tant tool with the po­ten­tial to en­hance trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty and to en­gen­der greater trust in po­lice of­fi­cers.

I would en­cour­age the com­mis­sion­er to take a spe­cial in­ter­est in mat­ters per­tain­ing to the treat­ment of po­lice in­volved in fa­tal shoot­ings; is­sues re­gard­ing the treat­ment and han­dling of men­tal­ly ill in­di­vid­u­als and the be­hav­iour of of­fi­cers when deal­ing with is­sues of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion:

The as­so­ci­a­tion would have met with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Mr Gary Grif­fith on di­verse oc­ca­sions both for­mal and in­for­mal.

Dur­ing such time, the as­so­ci­a­tion found him to be ex­treme­ly ac­com­mo­dat­ing, open mind­ed, pro­fes­sion­al­ly as­tute and wel­com­ing to some of the nov­el pro­pos­al made by the as­so­ci­a­tion. As a mat­ter of fact, in most in­stances the turn-around time for pro­posed items does not ex­ceed one day, two for the most, on his de­liv­ery of re­quests made that are con­sis­tent with wel­fare.

The ma­jor things the as­so­ci­a­tion was able to ac­com­plish with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in very short or­der were:

1. Con­sent and agree­ment on po­lice iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards, which has now been con­vert­ed to po­lice met­al badges, which has suc­cess­ful­ly been ac­tioned.

2. The con­sent and agree­ment of none lethal forms of weapons, such as, tasers, pep­per spray and body cam­eras, which re­sult­ed in both the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the as­so­ci­a­tion pe­ti­tion­ing the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty for a change in uni­forms and a re­quest for none lethal weapons, which was read in Fis­cal Bud­get 2018/2019 by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, to be is­sued to of­fi­cers in the new and up­com­ing year.

3. The ac­qui­esce and roll out of con­cealed car­ry firearms, and a pol­i­cy in­stal­ment for all of­fi­cers un­der his com­mand, af­ford­ing them the pro­tec­tion of loved ones and them­selves per­son­al­ly, as­sist­ing in blan­ket se­cu­ri­ty cov­er­age to the na­tion which has al­ready yield­ed mean­ing­ful re­sults.

4. The re­shap­ing of the po­lice im­age through trust and con­fi­dence, based on his co­op­er­a­tion of the brain­child of Mrs Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith and the as­so­ci­a­tion of the “I SuFind out how the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty gauges Gary's per­for­mance in Mon­day's Guardianpport Our Ser­vice (ISOS)” cam­paign, which has al­ready em­phat­i­cal­ly and rad­i­cal­ly changed the face and im­age of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice to a pos­i­tive one where con­fi­dence is be­ing re­stored, and in­creas­ing­ly, cit­i­zens in the ma­jor­i­ty are be­gin­ning to trust the TTPS, which is a ma­jor boost to the in­spi­ra­tion and moral of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

The as­so­ci­a­tion by its own eval­u­a­tion have as­sessed the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and has giv­en him two thumbs up. He has rad­i­cal­ly in the short­est pos­si­ble time, re­shape the im­age of the po­lice ser­vice and gave every po­lice of­fi­cer a feel­ing of self-worth, a new iden­ti­ty, and hope.