Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith has apol­o­gised to res­i­dents of Gulf View for a po­lice raid in the com­mu­ni­ty al­most six months ago which left many of the res­i­dents shocked and trau­ma­tised.

His apol­o­gy came dur­ing a meet­ing be­tween res­i­dents of the San Fer­nan­do area on Wednes­day evening.

“I do apol­o­gise, just like I would apol­o­gise for the same sit­u­a­tions that would have tak­en place on many oc­ca­sions in sim­i­lar op­er­a­tions in Beetham, Mor­vant and Laven­tille and oth­er ar­eas deemed a hot spot,” he said.

How­ev­er, his apol­o­gy came amongst his ex­pla­na­tion that cit­i­zens would oc­ca­sion­al­ly ex­pe­ri­ence in­con­ve­niences while the po­lice are con­duct­ing their du­ties to fight crime. He said he no­ticed in the coun­try that cit­i­zens of­ten call for change, how­ev­er, they be­lieve “it must not af­fect me.”

“It can’t work that way. At times there would be de­ci­sions tak­en by the po­lice ser­vice that is for the big­ger pic­ture,” he said.

On May 3, SORT of­fi­cers broke in­to sev­en homes dur­ing a raid in the Gulf View area lead­ing to the ar­rest of one man. How­ev­er res­i­dents claimed it was an act of po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion, racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and vic­tim­i­sa­tion. De­spite this, an in­ves­ti­ga­tion fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) said it found no ev­i­dence of mis­con­duct on the part of any po­lice of­fi­cer dur­ing the raid.

On Wednes­day, he said the op­er­a­tion was aimed at res­cu­ing a kid­nap­ping vic­tim to which he asked the res­i­dents:

“If you ever had an av­enue to pin point in a cer­tain area your loved one who was be­ing kid­napped who could be killed; would you feel that the po­lice had a right to go in and try and find that in­di­vid­ual? Again it is with­in the law.”

A state­ment is­sued by the Po­lice Ser­vice yes­ter­day said that Grif­fith the meet­ing formed part of Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith’s on­go­ing trans­for­ma­tion­al ef­forts to strength­en stake­hold­er part­ner­ships and com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment with all mem­bers of Par­lia­ment across all 41 con­stituen­cies with­in the nine polic­ing di­vi­sions of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.

It said that among the is­sues raised by mem­bers, were con­cerns about the use of the blue flash­ing lights, as well as sug­ges­tions for school in­ter­ven­tion which they be­lieved would al­low for a dra­mat­ic change in the is­sues that of­fi­cers have to deal with.

“Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith as­sured the gath­er­ing that TTPS’ re­sources are be­ing utilised to ef­fec­tive­ly re­duce crime and the fear of crime in T&T,” the state­ment said.

It added: “He fur­ther added that the pub­lic should utilise the new and im­proved E-999 sys­tem, as well as the new TTPS Mo­bile App. He in­formed res­i­dents of the plan for new ini­tia­tives; Street Talk-‘Big Broth­er Men­tor­ship’, Es­tab­lish­ment of a Schools An­ti-Vi­o­lence Unit and Col­lab­o­rat­ing with Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion on School Se­cu­ri­ty Unit. The new E-999 ser­vice is be­ing over­hauled to al­low for greater ef­fi­cien­cy, and as such the Com­mis­sion­er said “through this sys­tem, of­fi­cers of the Emer­gency Re­sponse Pa­trol Team are able to an­swer and pro­vide ser­vices to per­sons in a short­er time­frame.”