For­mer Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith says Trinidad and To­ba­go’s an­ti-gang leg­is­la­tion is too weak to ef­fec­tive­ly tar­get gang mem­bers, leav­ing po­lice with lit­tle choice but to pur­sue sus­pects for in­di­vid­ual of­fences.

Grif­fith made the com­ments dur­ing CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, while dis­cussing the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE) and the chal­lenges fac­ing law en­force­ment.

He said the coun­try needs stronger leg­is­la­tion that al­lows po­lice to act on cred­i­ble gang in­tel­li­gence rather than hav­ing to wait un­til mem­bers com­mit spe­cif­ic of­fences.

Grif­fith re­called push­ing for an­ti-gang leg­is­la­tion in 2006 af­ter study­ing ap­proach­es used in the Unit­ed States, in­clud­ing New York’s re­sponse to gang ac­tiv­i­ty.

He said then Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­tin Joseph agreed with his rec­om­men­da­tions and leg­is­la­tion was draft­ed. How­ev­er, he said the law does not give po­lice enough scope to act against gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty.

“The po­lice are left with very lit­tle choice. It is vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble to have some­one ar­rest­ed un­der gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty,” he said. “It is eas­i­er to ar­rest them for the crime they’re com­mit­ting than to be ar­rest­ed for gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty.”

Grif­fith said some US ju­ris­dic­tions al­low po­lice to ar­rest peo­ple based on stronger in­di­ca­tors of gang af­fil­i­a­tion, in­clud­ing their pres­ence in par­tic­u­lar ar­eas or wear­ing gang-re­lat­ed cloth­ing.

He said Trinidad and To­ba­go does not have com­pa­ra­ble pro­vi­sions.

The is­sue, he said, be­comes more com­pli­cat­ed dur­ing the SoE be­cause in­tel­li­gence must be prop­er­ly as­sessed be­fore it is used to re­strict some­one’s lib­er­ty.

Grif­fith crit­i­cised the re­liance on in­di­vid­ual in­tel­li­gence agen­cies work­ing sep­a­rate­ly, say­ing in­for­ma­tion from the po­lice, De­fence Force In­tel­li­gence Unit, Spe­cial Branch and oth­er agen­cies should be com­bined.

He point­ed to the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre at Knowsley, which he said was in­tend­ed to bring in­tel­li­gence agen­cies to­geth­er and turn in­for­ma­tion in­to us­able in­tel­li­gence and ev­i­dence.

Grif­fith said the sys­tem, which he de­scribed as cost­ing $500 mil­lion, is in­stead be­ing used large­ly as a po­lice dis­patch sys­tem.

He linked the lack of in­tel­li­gence co­or­di­na­tion to the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to deal with gangs, ter­ror­ism and oth­er na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty threats.

Grif­fith al­so ques­tioned the ex­tent to which politi­cians should de­ter­mine whether in­tel­li­gence is suf­fi­cient to re­strict some­one’s free­dom.

He ar­gued that law en­force­ment pro­fes­sion­als, rather than politi­cians, should make those as­sess­ments.

His com­ments come as the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to use the SoE as part of its re­sponse to crime and se­cu­ri­ty threats, while ques­tions re­main over how ef­fec­tive­ly the mea­sures are tar­get­ing or­gan­ised crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.