Akash Sama­roo

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour says the peo­ple named in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice Firearm User’s Li­cense Au­dit Re­port will be giv­en a chance to de­fend their ac­tions and con­trary to some news ar­ti­cles, the re­port is still very much alive and will even­tu­al­ly be laid in Par­lia­ment.

Ar­mour made the com­ment yes­ter­day dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence called to re­fute what he called “ir­re­spon­si­ble and un­bal­anced” re­port­ing in the Dai­ly Ex­press.

Hold­ing up its front page, which read “Firearms Au­dit Shot Down”, Ar­mour said, “The au­dit re­port has not been shot down, the au­dit re­port is a live cur­rent process that is un­der­go­ing what is known in law as due process.”

Ar­mour said a let­ter was writ­ten on Sep­tem­ber 6, 2022 to at­tor­ney Lar­ry Lal­la, who is rep­re­sent­ing for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith in the mat­ter. He said the let­ter was “leaked” to the me­dia and ex­cerpts were used which gave the im­pres­sion that the au­dit re­port will not be laid in Par­lia­ment.

How­ev­er, Ar­mour said it will be even­tu­al­ly.

Read­ing from the let­ter sent to Lal­la, Ar­mour said, “Con­sid­er­a­tion is be­ing giv­en as to whether there are per­sons ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by the find­ings in the au­dit re­port who have not had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­ment and make rep­re­sen­ta­tion on the mat­ters giv­ing rise to the find­ings.”

But be­fore that can be done, Ar­mour said con­sid­er­a­tion is be­ing giv­en that be­fore the re­port or its sum­ma­ry is laid in the pub­lic do­main, “an ap­pro­pri­ate per­son or a body of per­sons should re­view the re­port and should give an op­por­tu­ni­ty to those per­sons who may be ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed to com­ment and to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions and there­after to re­port to the head of the Gov­ern­ment un­der the con­sti­tu­tion as to what should be done next about a mat­ter that af­fects na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.”

He said the au­dit re­port will not be laid in a man­ner that will prej­u­dice its val­ue as an in­ves­tiga­tive re­port.

The AG told jour­nal­ists this means that it would cur­rent­ly be in­ap­pro­pri­ate to com­ment on the con­tents of the re­port.

Asked when the re­view com­mit­tee will be ap­point­ed, he said, “It’s a work in process that is be­ing dealt with ex­pe­di­tious­ly.”

Pressed for more, Ar­mour said this means it is hap­pen­ing right now but be­yond that, he could not give a more de­fin­i­tive an­swer. “What I can say in an­swer to the ques­tion ‘when?’ is that Gov­ern­ment is con­cerned that this must be dealt with as ex­pe­di­tious­ly as pos­si­ble.”

On Au­gust 30, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith’s lawyers were seek­ing a High Court ju­di­cial re­view to quash the TTPS FUL au­dit re­port due to “fla­grant un­ac­cept­able breach­es of nat­ur­al jus­tice” to Grif­fith, as he wasn’t asked to re­spond to the re­port.

In 2021, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said a com­pre­hen­sive au­dit in­to the op­er­a­tions of the FUL unit would be un­der­tak­en, fol­low­ing an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion from re­tired Jus­tice Stan­ley John.

John de­scribed the is­suance of firearms li­cens­es as “a thriv­ing, well-oiled, white-col­lar crim­i­nal en­ter­prise” in his find­ings.

In May 2022, two po­lice of­fi­cers were charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice for of­fences linked to cor­rup­tion in pro­cess­ing FUL ap­pli­ca­tions