Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance leader Gary Griffth says Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s ha­tred for him was seen in Row­ley’s com­ment at Tues­day’s Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment meet­ing in Bel­mont.

Grif­fith made the com­ment in an on­line video yes­ter­day, in re­sponse to the PM’s claim that ac­cept­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s choice of Grif­fith as the best choice for the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice post was the biggest mis­take he had ever made in his life.

“No Kei­th Row­ley, the biggest mis­take in T&T’s 60 years was se­lect­ing you as Prime Min­is­ter and we’ll en­sure that’s changed very soon,” Grif­fith said.

At the PNM meet­ing, Row­ley re­vealed that his de­ci­sion to give Grif­fith a chance as CoP was based on his be­lief that he should al­low ap­point­ments of the best peo­ple the coun­try had to of­fer for var­i­ous roles, re­gard­less of their po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tions. This, he said, saw the ap­point­ments of for­mer UNC min­is­ters in var­i­ous oth­er roles.

On the ap­point­ment of Grif­fith, how­ev­er, he said, “And that is why when the (Po­lice Ser­vice) Com­mis­sion said that Gary Grif­fith was the best per­son for the job as com­mis­sion­er of po­lice, I take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for giv­ing him a chance and ladies and gen­tle­men, that is the biggest mis­take I have ever made.”

Not­ing that an au­dit of the Firearms De­part­ment of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice had just been com­plet­ed, Row­ley said it makes “very, very trou­ble­some read­ing.”

But yes­ter­day, Grif­fith, who was CoP from 2018 to Au­gust 2021, point­ed to for­mer PNM leader Patrick Man­ning’s com­ment on Row­ley be­ing “out of con­trol” when he didn’t get his way and said, “That’s ex­act­ly what’s hap­pen­ing now.”

He said he got the high­est points in 2018 for the CoP job and the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion placed him fourth. He al­leged Row­ley might have hoped he’d have some mal­ice against Op­po­si­tion op­po­nents, but un­like cer­tain peo­ple he (Grif­fith) didn’t put pol­i­tics be­fore what is right for T&T.

He slammed a Gov­ern­ment that he al­leged “gave $42 mil­lion to a CoP” and “or­dered him” to tar­get po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents.

Grif­fith de­tailed achieve­ments un­der his tenure, in­clud­ing the “high­est re­duc­tion in every vi­o­lent crime in his­to­ry,” crack­ing crim­i­nal el­e­ments, build­ing trust and con­fi­dence in the TTPS and hav­ing had 89 per cent of the pub­lic want­i­ng him back as com­mis­sion­er - and asked if all that was Row­ley’s mis­take.

He said Row­ley’s mis­take was that he hoped Grif­fith would be a pup­pet and take Gov­ern­ment in­struc­tions and he had no in­ten­tion to do so dur­ing his tenure. Grif­fith asked if Row­ley’s com­ments were a “dog whis­tle” (sic) so the PolSC wouldn’t put him as num­ber one on the mer­it list at the end of its lat­est ef­fort to ap­point a new CoP.

He said Row­ley’ us­ing the TTPS Firearms Unit au­dit re­port as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for his state­ment was “the most com­i­cal thing I’ve ever heard.” He said Row­ley should ask who is the “very se­nior min­is­ter” who he (Grif­fith) claimed “ha­rassed him con­stant­ly to pro­vide ex­plo­sives for a friend in To­ba­go mi­nus OS­HA ap­proval,” to al­so get spe­cial firearms for him­self “to kill pigs” and a list of his “dis­tin­guished friends to get firearms fast-tracked” for them. But Grif­fith said he’d been en­sur­ing law-abid­ing peo­ple got firearms to pro­tect them­selves from crim­i­nals.

He re­it­er­at­ed his claim of Row­ley of “hand pick­ing and “pay­ing peo­ple big mon­ey” to do a re­port of “rum shop talk,” but said T&T didn’t buy it. He said three re­tired po­lice of­fi­cers were al­so un­able to ar­rest one per­son for deal­ing with il­le­gal firearms, yet Row­ley had the “au­dac­i­ty” to talk about le­gal firearms be­ing is­sued to peo­ple to pro­tect them­selves when mur­ders were done by il­le­gal firearms.

Grif­fith said T&T learned a les­son and a line was drawn and the coun­try need­ed to de­cide who they want to serve the coun­try - Row­ley or Grif­fith.