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Monday, July 7, 2025

Gary seeks second term as CoP

by

1478 days ago
20210620
Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith leaves the Solomon Mc Leod Theatre after the TTPS press briefing at the Police Administration Building, Port-of-Spain, last Monday.

Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith leaves the Solomon Mc Leod Theatre after the TTPS press briefing at the Police Administration Building, Port-of-Spain, last Monday.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, whose con­tract­ed term ends in Au­gust, will be among the can­di­dates to be con­sid­ered by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) when it be­gins the process to se­lect a Com­mis­sion­er for a new term.

Grif­fith is mak­ing him­self avail­able for a sec­ond term even though his three-year term, which start­ed in Au­gust 2018, has tak­en a toll on his health and fam­i­ly.

Le­gal no­tice 183, dat­ed last Thurs­day and signed by the sec­re­tary to Cab­i­net, con­firmed the PSC’s Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Se­lec­tion Process) Or­der 2021. This stat­ed the process for ap­point­ments to the of­fices of Com­mis­sion­er and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er.

When that process is com­plet­ed, the nom­i­nees list­ed by the PSC will be con­sid­ered by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

While Grif­fith isn’t com­ment­ing, sources very close to him con­firmed that he will be among the nom­i­nees for Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

On Sep­tem­ber 10, 2016, Guardian Me­dia broke the sto­ry that Grif­fith was of­fer­ing him­self for the po­si­tion.

When the mat­ter went be­fore Par­lia­ment for de­bate in Ju­ly 2018, the Gov­ern­ment sup­port­ed Grif­fith’s nom­i­na­tion.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­scribed him as an ex­em­plary can­di­date.

The Op­po­si­tion ab­stained. No­body vot­ed against.

Grif­fith is cred­it­ed with var­i­ous achieve­ments dur­ing his tenure, in­clud­ing a 30 per cent re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crimes in 2020 com­pared to 2019, the high­est per­cent­age re­duc­tion from one year to an­oth­er in more than 30 years. That in­clud­ed a 25 per cent re­duc­tion in mur­ders---the low­est rate in eight years.

A Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit was launched in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) in 2020.

There was al­so a 38 per cent re­duc­tion in crim­i­nal gangs and mem­ber­ship in gangs de­clined by 58 per cent.

Dur­ing his first year in the po­si­tion, Grif­fith re­ceived an 81 per cent pass­ing grade from the PSC.

How­ev­er, Grif­fith has had clash­es with the me­dia, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley (over the po­lice han­dling of a Bayshore pool par­ty last year) and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

A source close to the Com­mis­sion­er said the rigours of the job, “work­ing 20 hours dai­ly, sev­en days, ac­ces­si­ble to every­one” has tak­en a toll.

“Twice he was ward­ed at St Clair Med­ical.

“His body crashed, blood pres­sure lev­els hav­ing sky­rock­et­ed at times. Be­fore he was 110/70 and 53 beats a minute, healthy lev­els.

“Now those with agen­das dif­fer­ent to him have turned their guns at his fam­i­ly, more re­cent­ly his son Gary III and his daugh­ter, T’Shau­na.’’

Death threats al­most every week

Grif­fith’s wife, Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith, said: “I ful­ly un­der­stand self-sac­ri­fice is es­sen­tial to lead­er­ship, as this fam­i­ly has been in the unique po­si­tion for a num­ber of years. Every­thing ac­com­pa­ny­ing lead­er­ship po­si­tions im­pacts the fam­i­ly, good, bad or in­dif­fer­ent.

“When Gary be­came Com­mis­sion­er, I was asked by a jour­nal­ist, ‘Are you pre­pared for the im­pact on your fam­i­ly?’ I stat­ed this wasn’t our first for­ay in­to pub­lic life, as such, we were as pre­pared as we could be.

“As I re­flect, noth­ing could have pre­pared us for the ex­tremes we faced every day. I’ve seen nu­mer­ous lives pos­i­tive­ly im­pact­ed by Gary in his po­si­tion, how­ev­er, ex­act­ly how much is one ex­pect­ed to sac­ri­fice?

”Not on­ly has the role placed sig­nif­i­cant strain on the fam­i­ly, with the al­most week­ly new death threats, changes to some free­doms we take for grant­ed, the con­stant mon­i­tor­ing, con­stant vig­i­lance.

“But it’s al­so im­pact­ed in ways I re­al­ly wouldn’t have imag­ined. Afraid? No. Over it? Def­i­nite­ly.

”One of these ways is the toll on Gary’s health, hav­ing been hos­pi­talised twice.

“His health has been im­pact­ed in ways that would oth­er­wise nev­er have been an is­sue. Lack of ba­sic hu­man re­quire­ments of rest, sleep, nu­tri­tion, takes its toll.”

Dy­er-Grif­fith said there have been re­cent char­ac­ter at­tacks on the fam­i­ly which “demon­strat­ed the ab­solute­ly cal­lous spec­trum with­in which we op­er­ate.”

She added: ”Any­one who knows Gary, knows the con­trived, con­cert­ed, con­cen­trat­ed at­tacks on the fam­i­ly will evoke a re­sponse from him, quite nat­u­ral­ly but the in­ten­si­ty, re­al­ly begs the ques­tion, is this worth it?

“The toll on this fam­i­ly, can­not be quan­ti­fied, no amount of re­mu­ner­a­tion can buffer the im­pact and I can safe­ly say, life goes on with or with­out it if that be God’s will.’’

The se­lec­tion process

The June 17 le­gal no­tice states that the PSC will con­duct a re­cruit­ment process, in­clud­ing invit­ing ap­pli­ca­tions for the posts.

From the ap­pli­ca­tions re­ceived the PSC will se­lect the most suit­able can­di­dates for the as­sess­ment process. The can­di­dates will be sub­ject­ed to se­cu­ri­ty and pro­fes­sion­al vet­ting.

The as­sess­ment in­cludes a re­view of the can­di­date’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions, a med­ical re­port and the se­cu­ri­ty and pro­fes­sion­al vet­ting re­ports.

The al­so take in­to ac­count all in­for­ma­tion on the can­di­dates and com­pile an or­der of mer­it list

The names of the peo­ple list­ed on the or­der of mer­it list will be sub­mit­ted to the Pres­i­dent in ac­cor­dance with the pro­ce­dure set out in Sec­tion 123 of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

When ei­ther the post of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice or Deputy Com­mis­sion­er is va­cant or is about to be­come va­cant, the PSC may sub­mit to the Pres­i­dent a list of suit­ably qual­i­fied can­di­dates from among the ranks of the TTPS, in­clud­ing those on con­tract, or pre­vi­ous­ly on con­tract, as nom­i­nees to act in the po­si­tions pend­ing the con­clu­sion of the re­cruit­ment process.


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