Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has can­celled the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s Christ­mas and Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions in or­der to do­nate $1 mil­lion to the 266 po­lice of­fi­cers whose homes were de­stroyed in last week­end’s dev­ast­ing flood­ing across T&T.

Grif­fith made the an­nounce­ment while speak­ing at the week­ly po­lice press brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

Grif­fith said: “I have de­cid­ed that we would forego these events this year be­cause it is more crit­i­cal that the funds that can be utilised for these events, that would have last­ed a cou­ple of hours, should be in the hands of the po­lice of­fi­cers who have been af­fect­ed.”

While he ad­mit­ted the de­ci­sion may make him un­pop­u­lar with some po­lice of­fi­cers, Grif­fith said it was nec­es­sary.

“They may call me ‘Scrooge’ but the fact of the mat­ter is that the needs of the few would out­weigh the need of the many to en­joy them­selves in a so­cial ca­pac­i­ty,” Grif­fith said.

He said he had not de­cid­ed how the mon­ey would be di­vid­ed amongst the of­fi­cers, but not­ed that the 50 of­fi­cers who suf­fered the most loss­es would re­ceive pref­er­en­tial treat­ment.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view af­ter­wards, Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent In­sp Michael Seales said his or­gan­i­sa­tion was con­sult­ed and ful­ly sup­port­ed Grif­fith’s de­ci­sion.

“What the com­mis­sion­er has now demon­strat­ed is what it takes to be a po­lice­man and be­ing in ser­vice,” Seals said.

“It is im­por­tant be­cause you have to con­sid­er that we can­not be cel­e­brat­ing Christ­mas and every sin­gle of­fi­cer who has been dev­ast­ed by the flood is not able to give a glim­mer of lights to their kids and much less them­selves.”

Dur­ing his ad­dress at the brief­ing, Grif­fith again com­mend­ed his of­fi­cers for their work dur­ing the flood­ing dis­as­ter.

Ad­mit­ting that he was con­demned on so­cial me­dia for re­quir­ing of­fi­cers af­fect­ed by floods to still re­port to du­ty, Grif­fith added: “That is good, I pre­fer to be con­demned by ask­ing po­lice of­fi­cers to come out and do what is re­quired and they did. That shows the stan­dard of the TTPS.”