Ryan Hadeed

I'm a huge Sean Con­nery fan. And al­though he is best known for his stint as the British su­per­spy, James Bond, I pre­fer his post-Bond work, por­tray­ing char­ac­ters that are old­er and more thought­ful. One of my favourites is The Un­touch­ables, a 1987 Amer­i­can gang­ster film about Pro­hi­bi­tion-era Chica­go and loose­ly based on the ex­ploits of Eliot Ness, a fed­er­al agent work­ing to take down the crime syn­di­cate of Al Capone. Con­nery stars as James Mal­one, a vet­er­an "beat cop" who is re­cruit­ed by Ness for his ex­pe­ri­ence and in­cor­rupt­ibil­i­ty. Be­fore agree­ing to join, Mal­one ques­tions Ness as to how far he is will­ing to go to com­bat or­gan­ised crime in the city, im­ply­ing that it will take more than sim­ple de­ter­mi­na­tion and strict ad­her­ence to po­lice pro­ce­dure. Not long af­ter that blunt con­ver­sa­tion, Mal­one leads Ness' team of "un­touch­ables", so nick­named for their rep­u­ta­tion of op­er­at­ing above the law, on their first liquor raid.

Act­ing with­out of­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence or a search war­rant, he states "Every­one knows where the booze is. The prob­lem isn't find­ing it…the prob­lem is 'who wants to cross Capone'." Their first bust is a suc­cess; a mi­nor one at best. But it nonethe­less sends a clear mes­sage to the city's po­lice force, the crim­i­nal el­e­ments, and the pub­lic that things are go­ing to change.

News on crime took a se­ries of in­ter­est­ing set of twists and turns in the past few weeks. There was the re­port that po­lice of­fi­cers were pro­vid­ing es­cort ser­vices to fete go­ers. Then the high-pro­file in­ter­dic­tion of a sex traf­fick­ing ring. And fi­nal­ly, the in­ves­tiga­tive re­port re­veal­ing that sus­pect­ed gang lead­ers had been award­ed gov­ern­ment con­tracts. You know…none of those things sur­pris­es me, and I'm will­ing to bet that I'm not the on­ly one who feels that way. News like that on­ly adds cre­dence to the pop­u­lar catch­phrase that "Trinidad is not a re­al place." Be­cause let's be hon­est, we've all heard the ru­mours that such things were go­ing on; our coun­try makes a mo­rose joke of har­bour­ing se­crets that are pub­li­cal­ly known. Long has there been "talk", both on the streets and in high so­ci­ety, that "some po­lice does have a side hus­tle" or "dat is de place where all dem Span­ish h... does be". And, most fla­grant of them all, let's not for­get the now in­fa­mous pho­to of Cedric "Burkie" Burke, a sus­pect­ed gang leader, pos­ing next to our Pres­i­dent, dur­ing a state func­tion, as a "guest' of an MP; as if we need­ed any more proof of the Gov­ern­ment's col­lu­sion with crim­i­nal el­e­ments. To para­phrase Of­fi­cer Mal­one—every­one knows about these il­le­gal en­ter­pris­es…the prob­lem is find­ing peo­ple who are will­ing to con­front the crim­i­nals and the cor­rup­tion head-on.

'More pomp than sub­stance'

As if an an­swer to our prayers, we got Gary Grif­fith. Af­ter decades of in­ep­ti­tude and cor­rup­tion, both in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, we got us a tough-talk­ing for­mer sol­dier who is will­ing to put his rep­u­ta­tion on the line. Af­ter some six months serv­ing as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, the G-man still en­joys a high ap­proval rat­ing amongst the pub­lic. Good for him. How­ev­er, when one con­sid­ers that the crime rate re­mains un­changed, it begs the ques­tion as to the re­al mea­sure of his ef­fec­tive­ness. Love him or hate him, one can't de­ny Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith's pen­chant for brava­do. His pres­ence in the field, dressed in tac­ti­cal gear and flanked by armed, masked of­fi­cers, def­i­nite­ly pan­ders to the me­dia and the na­tion­al au­di­ence. That im­age, com­bined with his bel­li­cose rhetoric to­wards the crim­i­nal el­e­ments, has helped him cul­ti­vate a per­sona that he "kicks a.. and takes no pris­on­ers".

What is iron­ic is how he has turned on the very en­ti­ty that helped pro­pel him to crime-fight­ing star­dom. Dur­ing a re­cent ap­pear­ance on CNC3's Morn­ing Brew, he took the me­dia to task—the Guardian in par­tic­u­lar—for in­ter­view­ing Cedric Burke fol­low­ing a po­lice op­er­a­tion at his home. The CoP be­lieves that putting Mr Burke in the spot­light was es­sen­tial­ly glo­ri­fy­ing gang lead­ers and gang cul­ture. I think his crit­i­cism was a bit of a stretch; few in our na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty would be sym­pa­thet­ic to Burkie's dis­tress. And I high­ly doubt that his un­der­lings are avid read­ers of this news­pa­per or any news­pa­per for that mat­ter.

That be­ing said, with all due re­spect to Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith, I sus­pect that his ire had less to do with the me­dia's re­port­ing and more to do with his meth­ods be­ing brought in­to ques­tion. He of­ten speaks of wag­ing "a war" on crime and the crim­i­nal el­e­ments; ex­treme lan­guage in­deed, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly in­ac­cu­rate. Un­less you've been liv­ing in La La Land or serv­ing in our Par­lia­ment (the same place), it's abun­dant­ly clear that pre­vi­ous tech­niques weren't work­ing. De­spite the mul­ti­tude of stud­ies con­duct­ed and the like­wise amount of ini­tia­tives im­ple­ment­ed, crime con­tin­ued to spi­ral out of con­trol.

There­fore, it's un­der­stand­able why Gary Grif­fith, a for­mer mil­i­tary of­fi­cer, would ap­proach this mat­ter in an un­con­ven­tion­al, boor­ish man­ner, even if it seems to be more pomp than sub­stance. The con­cern, how­ev­er, is that the com­mis­sion­er's state­ments re­veal a will­ing­ness to op­er­ate above the law, even if that means ig­nor­ing prop­er po­lice pro­ce­dure and re­spect­ing the rights of sus­pect­ed crim­i­nals; any­thing to get the job done. Even then, the pub­lic's sup­port for him not on­ly val­i­dates his meth­ods but al­so shows their own will­ing­ness to en­dorse his tak­ing of such dra­con­ian mea­sures. Need­less to say, this is a dan­ger­ous mind­set.

For the record, I open­ly sup­port the CoP and the no­tion that des­per­ate times call for des­per­ate mea­sures. Both are the re­sult of a crime sit­u­a­tion that wasn't be­ing dealt with by the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties. But in all fair­ness, the fears of Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith be­com­ing a law un­to him­self are un­found­ed. Apart from his "talk", he has in no way en­croached on civ­il lib­er­ties. The rep­u­ta­tion of act­ing in a man­ner akin to El­liot Ness' Un­touch­ables might just be enough to shake up the sta­tus quo. But if cit­i­zens are cu­ri­ous as to just how far Gary Grif­fith is will­ing to go to clean up our coun­try, I would say that it's a fair ques­tion. And it's in all our best in­ter­est to keep a close eye on him.