Gail Alexan­der

Fam­i­ly is a pri­or­i­ty says Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, who’s still fi­nal­is­ing his de­ci­sion to ap­ply for the CoP job ahead— par­tic­u­lar­ly since he and his fam­i­ly have re­ceived 28 death threats in his three-year tour of du­ty.

“...28 death threats against my­self, my wife and my three chil­dren—most of the threats tar­get­ting me,” Grif­fith said yes­ter­day.

The death threats arose from his fight against crim­i­nal el­e­ments. In­tel­li­gence agency doc­u­ments have stat­ed that the fig­ure is the high­est record of such “Kill” threats against peo­ple in pub­lic of­fice and was rat­ed as the high­est risk.

Grif­fith spoke about his po­si­tion as he con­firmed he was “fi­nal­is­ing my de­ci­sion” on whether to pur­sue a sec­ond term in of­fice.

Grif­fith’s con­tract­ed pe­ri­od ends on Au­gust 18.

Last Sun­day’s hint that he might re­turn was re­ceived warm­ly by many groups.

A le­gal no­tice last Thurs­day ad­vised of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s se­lec­tion process or­der for a CoP and deputy. Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials yes­ter­day con­firmed the or­der will be tabled in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives which meets on Wednes­day. But no de­bate is re­quired to bring it in­to ef­fect, since it’s been ef­fect­ed since last Thurs­day. They stat­ed that the PSC isn’t re­quired to wait un­til the or­der is laid in Par­lia­ment, which is a sim­ple one-minute pro­ce­dure.

Lat­er in the process (de­tailed by the PSC’s or­der), a list of nom­i­nees will be sent to the Pres­i­dent. Par­lia­men­tary de­bate on the mat­ter will fol­low lat­er on.

Yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said, “I’ve ac­com­plished all that I need to do, I’ve served my coun­try in dif­fer­ent ca­pac­i­ties to the best of my abil­i­ty.’’

Han­dling death threats from crim­i­nals, health mat­ters and “marathon” days, he’s, how­ev­er, con­cerned about his po­si­tion’s im­pact on his chil­dren.

“For in­stance, my son’s now start­ed his ca­reer path (in foot­ball). If be­cause those who hate me con­tin­ue mak­ing my son a tar­get in­stead of di­rect­ing con­cerns to me, this will be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion. My son’s fu­ture shouldn’t be af­fect­ed be­cause of who his fa­ther is.

“My chil­dren—in­clud­ing my daugh­ter—have suf­fered and been tar­get­ted by those who ob­vi­ous­ly have jeal­ousy, agen­das and are di­a­met­ri­cal­ly op­posed to de­ci­sions I take for T&T’s good. My chil­dren shouldn’t have to suf­fer be­cause of how I try to serve my coun­try.”

He added, “It’s an ho­n­our to serve my coun­try and it’ll be an ho­n­our to con­tin­ue serv­ing my coun­try and cit­i­zens, but I do need to speak to my fam­i­ly care­ful­ly to bal­ance whether this sac­ri­fice I make will af­fect their ca­reer path and se­cu­ri­ty.”

That fam­i­ly dis­cus­sion will be soon, how­ev­er, since the le­gal no­tice is out.

“If I have to go for­ward to serve my coun­try and fel­low cit­i­zens, I must en­sure my wife and chil­dren are safe. I can han­dle any­thing di­rect­ed at me, in­clud­ing my health. But when it comes to my wife and chil­dren, that’s a dif­fer­ent is­sue, which is why my fam­i­ly and I will con­sid­er the mat­ter be­fore fur­ther for­mal word,” he said.

Grif­fith’s re­ceived con­sis­tent­ly good re­views from the PSC. But le­gal sources said he’s ap­par­ent­ly made en­e­mies af­ter cut­ting the TTPS’ over­time bill from $65 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly, pur­su­ing gang ac­tiv­i­ty, white-col­lar crime and hu­man traf­fick­ing. They not­ed in­roads in­to cer­tain ar­eas cost gang busi­ness heav­i­ly. It was con­firmed that crim­i­nal­ly-di­rect­ed death threats against the fam­i­ly over the years in­volved con­tract “mon­ey” in the range of six to sev­en fig­ures.