Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is ful­ly en­dors­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro for what Grif­fith says is his in-your-face ap­proach to crim­i­nals.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said Gue­var­ro was much like him, tak­ing the fight to the crim­i­nals, some­thing he said was need­ed to ad­dress crime prop­er­ly.

“This com­mis­sion­er seems to have that type of ag­gres­sive ap­proach. I’m not say­ing ar­ro­gant, but you need to fight fire with fire. You can’t Stephen Williams your way and ex­pect to re­duce crime be­cause the gangs are go­ing to see the per­son­al­i­ty of the per­son on top and say, ‘Well, look, I can af­ford to put my pres­sure be­cause they will back off.’ The present com­mis­sion­er has to con­tin­ue in the same style.”

Grif­fith claimed that while he was po­lice com­mis­sion­er be­tween 2018 and 2021, he met with al­leged gang lead­ers in Laven­tille and Beetham Gar­dens and made them re­alise he was un­like oth­er top po­lice of­fi­cers. He said that made the gang­sters back off.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence on Mon­day, the leader of the First Wave Move­ment, Umar Ab­dul­lah, called for dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against Gue­var­ro for wear­ing a “Pun­ish­er” em­blem on his of­fi­cial uni­form. The Pun­ish­er is a com­ic book char­ac­ter known for his vi­o­lent and dead­ly vig­i­lante jus­tice.

Gue­var­ro ex­plained that the em­blem was giv­en to him by a for­eign po­lice of­fi­cer dur­ing a train­ing ex­er­cise and did not em­body his per­spec­tive on treat­ing crime and crim­i­nals.

It was Gue­var­ro who ad­vised the Cab­i­net to ini­ti­ate a State of Emer­gency (SoE), stat­ing that pris­on­ers were col­lud­ing with oth­ers as part of a crime syn­di­cate to at­tack state of­fi­cials. While the threat has been elim­i­nat­ed, Gue­var­ro said the SoE was need­ed to fur­ther erode the crim­i­nal en­ter­prise, some­thing Grif­fith said he ap­pre­ci­at­ed.

Grif­fith said that in-the-face polic­ing should not be mis­tak­en for ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings.

“It is not about ex­tra­ju­di­cial killing. It is not about us do­ing it to them be­fore they do it to us. But it’s to let the crim­i­nals know that the po­lice have nu­mer­i­cal su­pe­ri­or­i­ty. They are bet­ter trained, and they can out­gun you and out-man you. That is what is re­quired,” he said.

“The gangs are not stu­pid, but they are go­ing to bul­ly them­selves in­to law en­force­ment if they be­lieve that there is a hi­er­ar­chy of lead­er­ship that just loves to wear gabar­dine, walk with a cane, and they don’t have the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to take the fight to the crim­i­nals. You’ve got to fight fire with fire.”

Grif­fith said he be­lieved Gue­var­ro not hav­ing been in the po­lice ex­ec­u­tive be­fore be­com­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er, may have giv­en him the edge. He said that might al­low him to ac­cept 21st-cen­tu­ry polic­ing more read­i­ly than old­er po­lice of­fi­cers, whom he re­gard­ed as hav­ing a “di­nosaur as­pect” to polic­ing.