Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er has de­scribed the Cus­toms Act that pro­hibits all cam­ou­flage-pat­terned items as “dumb and ridicu­lous.” Gary Grif­fith said the law serves no use­ful pur­pose.

“Laws are draft­ed and de­signed for a pur­pose. It is to en­sure that there is or­der in a coun­try, and, at times, it is crit­i­cal to en­sure that peo­ple can be safer. You don’t put a law just to in­con­ve­nience cit­i­zens,” he said.

Grif­fith, a for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter, said from his re­search, T&T is the on­ly coun­try in the world where any type of cam­ou­flage in any form and pat­tern is il­le­gal.

He point­ed out there was al­so a cam­ou­flage law un­der the De­fence Act which states that wear­ing cam­ou­flage re­sem­bling the De­fence Force uni­form or ar­ti­cles is il­le­gal.

“That is to en­sure that per­sons can­not im­i­tate mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices to be in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, so there can be some de­gree of un­der­stand­ing of the val­ue of that.

“What I un­der­stood, how­ev­er, is that when I was the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, through Cus­toms, there was a mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of that law and they ex­tend­ed that law to be as ridicu­lous as it can be. If a child has an or­ange cam­ou­flage toy, if a la­dy has a blue cam­ou­flage short pants that is il­le­gal,” he said.

Grif­fith, who said the law serves no pur­pose, added: “That does noth­ing to make peo­ple safer. It is a very dumb law, and we are bom­bard­ed on a reg­u­lar ba­sis with tourists com­ing in with cam­ou­flage and then they are ei­ther go­ing to be em­bar­rassed and our coun­try is al­so em­bar­rassed.”

Grif­fith said he had draft­ed an amend­ment dur­ing his tenure.

“I spoke to the present gov­ern­ment af­ter I left as min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty As usu­al, they ig­nored it. They dis­re­gard­ed it, but it is one of the dumb­est laws we ever had in Trinidad and To­ba­go where any sin­gle pat­tern form of cam­ou­flage is il­le­gal.”

Un­der the Cus­toms Act and De­fence Force Act, an of­fend­er could face a fine or im­pris­on­ment.

Over the week­end, a 32-year-old Moru­ga woman was ar­rest­ed for wear­ing cam­ou­flage pants. It is al­leged that the woman al­so re­sist­ed ar­rest, used ob­scene lan­guage, be­haved in a dis­or­der­ly man­ner, and as­sault­ed a po­lice of­fi­cer. She was ex­pect­ed to ap­pear in court yes­ter­day.

At­tempts to reach At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.