Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er at the Trinidad & To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) Fran­cis Joseph was among a group of 40 em­ploy­ees who had their con­tracts ter­mi­nat­ed with im­me­di­ate ef­fect yes­ter­day.

This was con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia by Joseph.

Joseph, a well-known jour­nal­ist who cov­ered the crime and court beat for decades, said he was called to a meet­ing chaired by Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc Don­ald Ja­cob and in­formed that he was ter­mi­nat­ing his con­tract im­me­di­ate­ly.

“Oth­er per­sons who were hired by for­mer Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith over the last three years al­so had their con­tracts ter­mi­nat­ed to­day (Mon­day),” Joseph said.

Joseph’s name was among a list of names men­tioned in a pur­port­ed­ly leaked unedit­ed ver­sion of an Ex­press ar­ti­cle. The al­leged unedit­ed ver­sion of the ar­ti­cle went vi­ral on so­cial me­dia on Sun­day.

An­oth­er name on the list was Paul Na­hous, who con­firmed that he too was fired. He ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that the valu­able con­tri­bu­tions he made to the TTPS were cut short.

When asked if he felt the ter­mi­na­tion came as a re­sult of the al­leged leaked ar­ti­cle, Na­hous replied: “So to me this is not as a re­sult of the ar­ti­cle. The ar­ti­cle seems to be a re­sult of this was com­ing, and in my view, the ar­ti­cle came af­ter the de­ci­sion was made. Be­cause Mr Ja­cob and the ex­ec­u­tive will not sit at 8 in the morn­ing and then de­cide at 10 am to call 40 peo­ple to fire them. I’ve worked with Mr Ja­cob, and he is in my view a rea­son­able per­son, who would have thought through every de­ci­sion. So to me, this was some­thing that was de­cid­ed pri­or to the print­ing of the ar­ti­cle.”

The ar­ti­cle claimed peo­ple were hired by Grif­fith dur­ing his term in of­fice as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and list­ed their al­leged “ex­or­bi­tant” salaries.

In the leaked mes­sages it was al­leged that names were left out in the edit­ed and pub­lished piece on Sun­day.

On Sun­day, Grif­fith re­spond­ed to the pub­lished ar­ti­cle say­ing he was not sur­prised by the sto­ry.

On Mon­day, Grif­fith again took to so­cial me­dia to de­fend the ex­per­tise and qual­i­fi­ca­tions of the in­di­vid­u­als he hired, say­ing they helped to trans­form the po­lice ser­vice.

Hours af­ter they were ter­mi­nat­ed, he la­belled the dis­missals, “bla­tant po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in the run­ning of the TTPS.”

“If at any time our na­tion has seen de­lib­er­ate po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in the run­ning of the Po­lice Ser­vice, it is to­day.

On the heels of an an­nounce­ment about re­view­ing of con­tracts at the TTPS, by the line Min­is­ter, dur­ing a par­lia­men­tary de­bate, and a hit-piece in yes­ter­day’s Sun­day Ex­press news­pa­pers, every sin­gle right-think­ing cit­i­zen should be very con­cerned that the hi­er­ar­chy of the TTPS ap­pears to have been pres­sured to take di­rec­tives, to ex­e­cute a well-or­ches­trat­ed plan.”

He again de­fend­ed the pro­fes­sion­als he hired and said “ these in­di­vid­u­als were at the heart of the re­mark­able num­bers, and pub­lic sen­ti­ment turn around, that the TTPS has en­joyed in the past cou­ple of years, un­der my watch.”

Grif­fith said that while an at­tempt will be made to de­scribe the ter­mi­na­tions as bud­getary cuts, it is not as he said it was, “born out of pet­ty vin­dic­tive­ness, which is made even more glar­ing be­cause in­di­vid­u­als were fired on the spot, with­out the in­volve­ment of the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the per­son re­spon­si­ble for ter­mi­nat­ing con­tracts.”