DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

A sharp war of words be­tween the cur­rent and for­mer heads of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has height­ened ten­sions over the per­ceived in­de­pen­dence of the coun­try’s top law en­force­ment of­fice.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro yes­ter­day sought to set the record straight, is­su­ing a point­ed re­sponse to ac­cu­sa­tions of po­lit­i­cal align­ment.

His re­marks came a day af­ter for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith told Guardian Me­dia he be­lieved Gue­var­ro had be­come a “pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer” for the sit­ting ad­min­is­tra­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in his de­fence of the now-re­moved Unit­ed States mil­i­tary radar in To­ba­go.

Ad­dress­ing the al­le­ga­tions of bias, Gue­var­ro mount­ed a de­fence of his pro­fes­sion­al neu­tral­i­ty.

“I have nev­er vot­ed in any elec­tion. I am proud of my apo­lit­i­cal sta­tus. I have no de­sire for po­lit­i­cal of­fice, nor have I ever held mem­ber­ship in any po­lit­i­cal par­ty.

“My loy­al­ty is to the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, not to any po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion, nor do I har­bour any am­bi­tion of en­ter­ing pol­i­tics.”

The fric­tion orig­i­nat­ed with Grif­fith’s cri­tique of the To­ba­go radar in­stal­la­tion.

Grif­fith had dis­missed the hard­ware’s ne­ces­si­ty in do­mes­tic crime-fight­ing, sug­gest­ing Gue­var­ro’s praise for the sys­tem was an echo of gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy.

“What I see is a po­lice com­mis­sion­er who is ready and able to be­come the pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer for the Gov­ern­ment, which is very, very fright­en­ing,” Grif­fith pre­vi­ous­ly said.

“This is not in­dica­tive of the Gov­ern­ment di­rect­ly be­ing in­volved and in­ter­fer­ing with the run­ning of the po­lice ser­vice. This shows a po­lice com­mis­sion­er who is will­ing and able to say every sin­gle thing that the Gov­ern­ment says, and he’s go­ing to agree whether they are right or wrong.”

Gue­var­ro did not mere­ly de­fend his record; he launched a sweep­ing counter-at­tack against Grif­fith’s own lega­cy and po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry.

Char­ac­ter­is­ing Grif­fith’s re­marks as the des­per­ate at­tempts of a fig­ure seek­ing “to re­main rel­e­vant,” the com­mis­sion­er point­ed to Grif­fith’s failed bids for elect­ed of­fice.

“It is un­for­tu­nate that the for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice con­tin­ues to project his own po­lit­i­cal as­pi­ra­tions on­to oth­ers. His re­peat­ed at­tempts at elect­ed of­fice have been re­ject­ed time and time again by the pop­u­la­tion. And that is a mat­ter of pub­lic record. They don’t want you.”

Gue­var­ro fur­ther al­leged that Grif­fith’s tenure left the TTPS bur­dened by hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in debt and ad­min­is­tra­tive dis­ar­ray, cit­ing a Min­istry of Fi­nance au­dit cov­er­ing 2017 to 2021. He specif­i­cal­ly high­light­ed scan­dals with­in the firearms per­mit unit and le­gal judg­ments that he claims have stymied in­ter­nal pro­mo­tions.

“All of these were con­se­quences of his fail­ure to prop­er­ly un­der­stand and ex­e­cute the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the of­fice he held. But then again, he was nev­er a po­lice,” Gue­var­ro quipped.

Nine months in­to his lead­er­ship, Gue­var­ro is us­ing the lat­est crime da­ta as his pri­ma­ry shield against crit­i­cism.

He cred­it­ed in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven polic­ing for the “largest re­duc­tion in homi­cides ever record­ed,” not­ing that mur­der fig­ures have hit their low­est point since 2011.

“This re­duc­tion oc­curred with­out cur­few, lock­down, any re­stric­tions on move­ment, un­like the pe­ri­od in which he mis­man­aged the TTPS.”

Vow­ing that this would be his fi­nal word on the mat­ter, Gue­var­ro said he would re­turn his fo­cus to “in­sti­tu­tion­al in­tegri­ty and de­liv­er­ing re­sults.”