Chester Sam­bra­no

For­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Gary Grif­fith has de­scribed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s an­nounce­ment of a na­tion­al health emer­gency on crime as hold­ing no sub­stance.

Row­ley made the state­ment at a news con­fer­ence on Mon­day in re­sponse to ris­ing crime in this coun­try.

But amid a lack of clear de­tails on how it is ex­pect­ed to be rolled out, Grif­fith has drawn his own con­clu­sion on what the PM may be try­ing to im­ple­ment.

“Try­ing to re­fer to it as a health is­sue, it gives the per­cep­tion that he may be try­ing to call an­oth­er ..., us­ing pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions to try to af­fect the free­dom of move­ment by cit­i­zens, that is the on­ly thing I could see be­cause oth­er than that it makes no sense,” he said.

At his news con­fer­ence, Row­ley said the Pub­lic Health Emer­gency ef­fort will be led by the per­ma­nent sec­re­taries of the Min­istries of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Health. He said it will al­so in­volve the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Po­lice Ser­vice, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and Min­istries of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Sport and Ed­u­ca­tion.

Row­ley said the ob­jec­tive is to en­ter the youth pop­u­la­tion at var­i­ous lev­els and to be­gin a line of ed­u­ca­tion which could steer peo­ple away from par­tic­i­pa­tion or be­ing de­sen­si­tised by crime and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

But Grif­fith said while this sec­ondary crime pre­ven­tion ap­proach is im­por­tant, it takes sev­er­al years to get re­sults. He said what is need­ed im­me­di­ate­ly in this sit­u­a­tion is pri­ma­ry crime pre­ven­tion.

“Which in­volves polic­ing, good law en­force­ment, hard-tar­get­ing, de­ter­rents, a rapid re­sponse, high vis­i­bil­i­ty, when it is you have pre­dic­tive polic­ing, in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven polic­ing, these are the things that will cause a mas­sive re­duc­tion in crime, some­times with­in a few months,” he said.

As it re­lat­ed to the PM’s com­ments over a re­port on the Firearms Unit of the TTPS which he re­cent­ly re­ceived, Grif­fith de­scribed it as “ridicu­lous.”

Row­ley said the re­port makes “very dis­turb­ing read­ing” and he in­tends to send it to the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, while the re­port’s ex­ec­u­tive sum­ma­ry will be laid in Par­lia­ment.

But Grif­fith said this is the third time the PM is try­ing to get in­volved in law en­force­ment.

“In this sit­u­a­tion, try to go in­to Par­lia­ment be­cause you know that what you are say­ing, if you say it out­side le­gal ac­tion could be tak­en on you,” he said.

In No­vem­ber last year, re­tired as­sis­tant com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Welling­ton Vir­gil, re­tired ACP Ray­mond Craig and In­spec­tor Leonard Charles were ap­point­ed to au­dit the TTPS Firearms Unit.

At­tor­ney Lar­ry Lal­la has since writ­ten the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion ask­ing that they not weigh a re­port in­to the is­suance of firearm users’ li­cens­es when con­sid­er­ing Grif­fith’s ap­pli­ca­tion to be­come this coun­try’s next po­lice com­mis­sion­er.