Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) Gary Grif­fith says the Prime Min­is­ter’s al­le­ga­tions of mis­man­age­ment of funds while he was Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er (18 Au­gust 2018 to 17 Au­gust 2021) are mis­lead­ing and un­true.

On Thurs­day while speak­ing on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form in St James, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said he had a 46-page Min­istry of Fi­nance Au­dit Doc­u­ment that showed Grif­fith abused his au­thor­i­ty while in of­fice.

“Let me read a cou­ple of lines of it for you, there were nu­mer­ous in­stances where sin­gle-con­tract agree­ments ap­proved were in ex­cess of the com­mis­sion­er’s del­e­gat­ed au­thor­i­ty of one mil­lion dol­lars and con­tracts were bro­ken up to by­pass the del­e­gat­ed au­thor­i­ty of both the min­is­te­r­i­al ten­ders com­mit­tee and the cen­tral ten­ders board, there were nine in­stances where con­tracts were ap­proved in­ter­nal­ly by the TTPS of which the Com­mis­sion­er’s au­thor­i­ty did not ex­ist,” the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­port al­leged.

Dr Row­ley added that the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice has the au­thor­i­ty to ac­cess up to one mil­lion dol­lars but that Grif­fith al­lowed the po­lice to en­ter in­to a con­tract for over $50 mil­lion.

“In par­tic­u­lar, on De­cem­ber 30, 2020, the TTPS and a pri­vate com­pa­ny en­tered in­to a ve­hi­cle lease agree­ment for the lease of 114 ve­hi­cles for a pe­ri­od of three years from Jan­u­ary 1, 2021, at a cost of 51.1 mil­lion dol­lars,” he said.

Ex­plain­ing why the $51.1-mil­lion lease was part of the bud­get al­lo­ca­tion, Grif­fith said, “When we for­ward­ed this to the Gov­ern­ment, guess who ap­proved it? The Gov­ern­ment. So for him to come now to say that these items were done with­out the knowl­edge and the ap­proval ... that is how these things were paid be­cause there was a bud­get al­lo­ca­tion we sub­mit­ted to the Gov­ern­ment and the Gov­ern­ment ap­proved. It does not go un­der the process of a mil­lion-dol­lar cap but we did it un­der a bud­get al­lo­ca­tion.”

Grif­fith said he was able to cut costs in oth­er ar­eas dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

“What he failed to state was that his Min­is­ter of Fi­nance vir­tu­al­ly sab­o­taged the Po­lice Ser­vice dur­ing COVID when it is ob­vi­ous that we will need more po­lice man­pow­er, equip­ment, and fu­el they cut the bud­get by 240 mil­lion dol­lars and, thank­ful­ly, be­cause of my con­cept in un­der­stand­ing prop­er man­age­ment, I was able to cut cost in dif­fer­ent things like 300 mil­lion dol­lars of over­time cor­rup­tion in the Po­lice Ser­vice and tens up­on tens of mil­lions of dol­lars in ex­tra du­ty,” he said.

Grif­fith said he has not seen the Min­istry of Fi­nance Au­dit and de­scribed the Re­tired Ap­peal Court Judge Jus­tice Stan­ley John’s re­port on Firearm Users’ Li­cences as a fail­ure.

He said af­ter two years no of­fi­cer was ques­tioned or ar­rest­ed.

On Thurs­day, the Prime Min­is­ter said the re­port on guns and am­mu­ni­tion in the TTPS by Jus­tice John de­scribed the po­lice ser­vice as a crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“So, in case you all don’t know what is the man­i­festo of the NTA it is a well-oiled crim­i­nal en­ter­prise ... the peo­ple of this coun­try should take note,” the Prime Min­is­ter warned on Thurs­day.

He said while the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) cam­paigned on Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form, the Op­po­si­tion who the NTA, ac­cord­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter, “is now in bed with” wants to bring stand your ground law to the Par­lia­ment.

On Mon­day the UNC an­nounced an ac­com­mo­da­tion with the NTA to con­test the up­com­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions.

 He said both par­ties be­lieve that to curb crime they have to mil­i­tarise the pop­u­la­tion and added that he had no choice but to be­lieve it was racial­ly skewed.

“If you see some­body you don’t like you shoot them and you tell the po­lice. I was afraid of that per­son, a child ball bounce in­to your yard and the moth­er come be­hind to fol­low the child and at the end of the day I am say­ing it here tonight in St James, if you all don’t be­lieve me, don’t doubt me that is a pol­i­cy that is sim­ply say­ing is a dog whis­tle that they go­ing to give peo­ple of a cer­tain race guns to shoot peo­ple of an­oth­er race be­cause they are say­ing that the crime in this coun­try which we know is across the board is one race at­tack­ing an­oth­er race,” Dr Row­ley said.

The NTA leader called on the Prime Min­is­ter to stop race-bait­ing and con­demned his lan­guage and be­hav­iour.

“I call on all re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions to con­demn such in­flam­ma­to­ry and di­vi­sive race-bait­ing. I call up­on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to call the Prime Min­is­ter to ac­count and stop this di­vi­sive­ness with im­me­di­ate ef­fect. I en­cour­age all oth­er po­lit­i­cal lead­ers to call out the rep­re­hen­si­ble ac­tions of the Prime Min­is­ter,” he said.

‘I grant­ed rough­ly 4,000 firearms’

Ac­cord­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter in 2016 338 FULs were grant­ed, in 2017 363 FULs were grant­ed, in 2018 732 FULs were grant­ed, in 2019 1,704 FULs were grant­ed, in 2020 2,800 FULs were grant­ed, and in 2021 1,986 FULs were grant­ed.

A to­tal of 7,923 dur­ing Grif­fith’s tenure, ac­cord­ing to Dr Row­ley. But the for­mer com­mis­sion­er said he grant­ed rough­ly 4,000 FULs in his time, half of which went to law en­force­ment of­fi­cers and the se­cu­ri­ty in­dus­try.

“The lies of Kei­th Row­ley to give the im­pres­sion that I was giv­ing our firearms to every­one ... half of those were for po­lice of­fi­cers, sol­diers, sailors, cus­toms of­fi­cers, im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers, prison of­fi­cers who need­ed those firearms,” he said.

Grif­fith said these of­fi­cers were tar­get­ed by crim­i­nals be­cause of what they did while on du­ty. He said when they check out to go home, they had to leave their ser­vice pis­tol at the sta­tion and put them­selves and their fam­i­lies at risk.

He said Dr Row­ley was a man that will stop at noth­ing to en­sure his modus operan­di of di­vide and con­quer.