Lee An­na Ma­haraj

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er and Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Gary Grif­fith has sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to the of­fice of act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc Don­ald Ja­cob con­cern­ing the in­ter­cep­tion of his cell phones.

Grif­fith claimed he had ev­i­dence his de­vices, as well as his wife’s de­vices, were tapped by an­oth­er par­ty. “Mr Ja­cob (Mc Don­ald) has stat­ed to the me­dia that I wasn’t be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed, yet it is con­firmed that all my mo­bile phones are be­ing in­ter­cept­ed be­cause of the re­quest of Mr Ja­cob, who has stat­ed that it was based on in­tel­li­gence. I in­tend to take this fur­ther. Through my at­tor­neys, we have now sub­mit­ted a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to Mr Ja­cob and I am call­ing him out to show to the coun­try what is your in­tel­li­gence. You can­not use the word in­tel­li­gence to in­vade the pri­va­cy of cit­i­zens of this coun­try. To­day it is me, to­mor­row it could be you,” Grif­fith said.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at the NTA’s head­quar­ters on Tues­day, Grif­fith, with his at­tor­ney Lar­ry Lal­la, said he pro­vid­ed the me­dia with copies of the let­ter ad­dressed to Ja­cob, as well as meet­ing min­utes from the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) con­cern­ing his sus­pen­sion dur­ing his tenure as CoP.

In the pre-ac­tion let­ter, he called on Ja­cob to present rea­son­ing for bug­ging his de­vices, fail­ing which will re­sult in “im­me­di­ate le­gal ac­tion”.

He said the al­leged in­ter­cep­tion is il­le­gal and a breach of pri­va­cy be­cause he is not guilty of any crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Lal­la al­so im­plied that Ja­cob tap­ping his phone is in di­rect re­la­tion to Grif­fith vy­ing for the CoP’s post.

Grif­fith said the phone bug­ging is­sue was on­ly brought to his at­ten­tion about a month ago. He al­so once again protest­ed his “un­law­ful sus­pen­sion” as po­lice com­mis­sion­er and called for the ar­rest of the re­spon­si­ble par­ty.

“Some­body must go to jail. The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion nev­er re­scind­ed the mer­it list. The PSC nev­er sus­pend­ed me as com­mis­sion­er of po­lice. The on­ly body that can sus­pend a com­mis­sion­er of po­lice is the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, this was not done,” he said.

Grif­fith al­so re­it­er­at­ed that his in­ten­tion or reap­ply­ing for the com­mis­sion­er’s post was to high­light the “ha­tred” and “bit­ter­ness” of the Prime Min­is­ter.

“Kei­th Row­ley is go­ing to dis­re­gard the fact that un­der my watch in my last year, it was the high­est re­duc­tion in all vi­o­lent crime in the his­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go. So, my ap­pli­ca­tion is sim­ply to ex­pose the char­ac­ter of the in­di­vid­ual,” he said.