Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is ques­tion­ing the le­gal­i­ty of hav­ing Unit­ed States se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel op­er­ate along­side lo­cal of­fi­cers at the Gov­ern­ment’s planned joint po­lice-army posts.

Grif­fith’s com­ments come af­ter Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der sug­gest­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of US per­son­nel join­ing lo­cal of­fi­cers at the fa­cil­i­ties, say­ing it could be an “added ad­van­tage.”

Asked about the prospect on Mon­day, Alexan­der said, “Some things you have to leave as a sur­prise. You know it’s about hav­ing the added ad­van­tage, so I will leave that for the mind to think.”

But Grif­fith said there was no le­gal au­thor­i­ty for in­ter­na­tion­al mil­i­tary per­son­nel to ex­er­cise lo­cal polic­ing pow­ers.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said, “There is ab­solute­ly no le­gal au­thor­i­ty. There’s no statu­to­ry po­lice pow­ers or ar­rest that can be giv­en to in­ter­na­tion­al mil­i­tary to be in­volved in polic­ing.”

He said the is­sue was dif­fer­ent when it came to the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force, which he sup­ports be­ing used along­side po­lice in joint op­er­a­tions.

Grif­fith said sol­diers could pro­vide ad­di­tion­al man­pow­er and tac­ti­cal sup­port dur­ing volatile sit­u­a­tions, while po­lice of­fi­cers re­tain re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for ar­rests.

“They pro­vide im­mense sup­port to the po­lice. They pro­vide sup­port to the po­lice of­fi­cers. So the po­lice of­fi­cers will be the ones to ar­rest,” he said.

He re­ject­ed the need to give sol­diers ad­di­tion­al ar­rest pow­ers, ar­gu­ing that ex­ist­ing arrange­ments such as the In­ter­a­gency Task Force al­ready pro­vide a law­ful frame­work for sol­diers to sup­port po­lice. Min­is­ter of De­fence Wayne Sturge has al­ready made it clear that Gov­ern­ment is not look­ing to ex­pand the pow­ers of the de­fence force.

Grif­fith, how­ev­er, re­mains sharply crit­i­cal of the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to es­tab­lish 30 joint po­lice-army posts across the coun­try.

He de­scribed the ini­tia­tive as “cos­met­ic” and said fixed posts would not pro­vide the mo­bil­i­ty or rapid re­sponse need­ed to de­ter se­ri­ous crime.

In­stead, he called for more foot and ve­hi­cle pa­trols, high­way pa­trols, rapid re­sponse units and emer­gency re­sponse pa­trols.

“The more po­lice posts you have, the less of­fi­cers,” Grif­fith said, ar­gu­ing that po­lice sta­tions and posts are pri­mar­i­ly lo­gis­ti­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive fa­cil­i­ties rather than mech­a­nisms for re­spond­ing to dis­tress calls.

He al­so ques­tioned whether the posts could ef­fec­tive­ly pro­tect of­fi­cers if they are ex­pect­ed to spend much of their time out­side the fa­cil­i­ties on pa­trol.

For Grif­fith, the more fun­da­men­tal is­sue is in­tel­li­gence.

He said ar­rest­ing al­leged gang mem­bers does not nec­es­sar­i­ly dis­man­tle gangs be­cause law en­force­ment must be able to turn in­tel­li­gence in­to ev­i­dence ca­pa­ble of sup­port­ing charges.

“The rea­son for the PDOs is be­cause of the fail­ure of in­tel­li­gence to be able to turn in­tel­li­gence in­to ev­i­dence to lead charges,” he said.

Grif­fith called for greater in­tel­li­gence shar­ing among the po­lice, De­fence Force and oth­er se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies, say­ing in­for­ma­tion should be fused and analysed to iden­ti­fy gang struc­tures and tar­get their lead­er­ship.

The Gov­ern­ment has main­tained that the posts are a pub­lic safe­ty mea­sure and that their roll­out will con­tin­ue.