Former police commissioner Gary Griffith says Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley’s assertion that Cabinet only gave the Strategic Services Agency (SSA) power to have guns last year was Rowley’s ignorance of the law.
During Wednesday’s post-Cabinet media briefing, Rowley said he was surprised that former SSA employee and self-professed spy pastor Ian Brown was armed with police-issued weapons. Brown was appointed a Special Reserve Police officer in 2021 by then-commissioner Griffith at the request of then-SSA director Major Roger Best, who is now on administrative leave. Brown was immediately assigned to the spy agency. On March 3, Best was sent on administrative leave over the questionable recruitment of some SSA employees. Former ambassador and retired Brigadier General Anthony Phillips-Spencer was appointed acting director to undertake a review and audit of operations within the agency.
As a result of the internal investigation, 12 SSA employees have been fired, including former deputy director Joanne Daniel. Daniel’s husband, Andy, was killed in 2023. Investigators are probing if his murder, as well as those of Bryan Felix and Aleem Khan, was in any way linked to SSA operations. Best and Daniel were members of Brown’s church.
Brown’s SRP status was revoked on March 19 and he returned four guns he had access to as an SRP.
As he addressed the ongoing SSA fiasco on Wednesday, Rowley said, “These are not things that are supposed to happen. The SSA did not have the authority to have armed officers until November of last year, when Cabinet approved that after a number of requests.”
During a Zoom interview with Guardian Media yesterday, however, Griffith said the authority to grant the SSA power to be armed is a constitutional one and not governmental.
“The audacity of Keith Rowley to actually be so naive, if not stupid, to believe that the Cabinet has approval to give units in the state approval to have firearms. Keith Rowley you’re a civilian, you’re a politician. No cabinet can give approval for an arm of the state to have firearms. The only person that can do that is the Commissioner of Police. So the comments made by Keith Rowley shows his total lack of understanding as the chair of the National Security Council, his stupidity in believing that the Cabinet could approve weapons to be given to any arm of the state. They cannot be SSA for over a decade or 15-odd years, officers in the SSA have access and have carried firearms.”
Griffith said this is because the SSA may be involved in clandestine operations.
Legislation passed last year
The SSA was only legally allowed to carry guns last November after the Firearms (Amendment) Bill 2022 became law. The act was proclaimed by President Christine Kangaloo on November 1 last year.
The amendment to the law allows the SSA director and those appointed by the officeholder to bear firearms during the execution of their duties.
For an SSA member to have had guns prior to that, they would have had to be made an SRP, as was the case of Pastor Brown, or apply for a Firearm User’s License (FUL) privately.
Griffith also defended the purchase of what has been deemed “spy equipment” for the TTPS, which he said the SSA was given access to.
Rowley said the TTPS got no approval to purchase such equipment.
“The police got that by a commissioner who thought he didn’t have to follow the policy of the Government on this matter,” Rowley said.
The equipment was leased to the TTPS at $992,000 per month for a four-year lease.
Asked about the equipment, Griffith said it was not spy technology that could intercept but rather “interrogate” cell phones.
“This would have been working hand in hand with the SSA. Remember, the TTPS, we had a budget that was much more effective than the SSA. So the SSA was aware that there were types of technological capabilities out there they may not have the budgetary allocation for and that is why that type of equipment was not used. It could not and it should not have been used unless it is you get the requisite approval from the SSA.”
He said the police did not need the SSA’s permission to acquire the equipment but understood it could make the purchase and grant the SSA and other agencies access to it, which assisted the country.
“We needed to get that type of technological capability to be able to enhance our intelligence and if it is that we can acquire it, then the SSA can be able to utilise it. It must be monitored and overseen. The SSA must have that factor to make sure that they are aware of all aspects of interception that takes place,” Griffith said.
The equipment was handed over to the SSA after Griffith left the TTPS.
Rowley also distanced himself from the TTPS’ Research and Analysis Unit (RAU), which was reportedly a parallel unit to the SSA.
Griffith said he established the RAU because he understood the need for a unit capable of interrogating devices.
“In this era, well into the second quarter of the 21st century, the type of technology that is available, it shouldn’t just be that you have to keep running to the SSA, where a police service is supposed to have some degree of technological capability to be involved in certain aspects. Not interception.”
Griffith said any supposed link to him as the former CoP and the investigations into the SSA was just a political witch-hunt.