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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Griffith: Jacob would not be the next Police Commissioner

by

Chester Sambrano
1101 days ago
20220706
Gary Griffith speaks during a media conference at the Hyatt Regency, Wrightson Road, Port-of-Spain, on Saturday.

Gary Griffith speaks during a media conference at the Hyatt Regency, Wrightson Road, Port-of-Spain, on Saturday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

For­mer Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith has pro­claimed that Mc Don­ald Ja­cob would not be the next Top Cop.

The dead­line for ap­pli­ca­tions for the po­si­tion end­ed at 4p.m on Thurs­day, June 30.

While it is still un­clear whether Ja­cob, cur­rent­ly act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, ap­plied, Grif­fith, has en­tered the race to hold the top post once again.

Speak­ing on CNC3's The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Grif­fith spoke about what a new top cop should put fo­cus on, but while do­ing so he im­plied who he thought would not be cho­sen.

"The main thing that should be done is who­ev­er gets in the of­fice, gets in the chair, and I am sure it would not be Mr Ja­cob, all you need to do is to re­boot what was there be­fore and what was work­ing," Grif­fith said

Last month Grif­fith while speak­ing on the Grand Slam Morn­ing Show on Slam 100.5FM said Ja­cob was no longer tak­ing his phone calls or mes­sages.

He said there were up to 73 poli­cies and pro­grammes that he im­ple­ment­ed and were dis­man­tled af­ter he left of­fice.

Among them are the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre, the Com­mis­sion­er's Com­mand Cen­tre and the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Unit.

He said this was the rea­son for what he called the break­down in com­mu­ni­ca­tion dur­ing protests in and around Port-of-Spain on Mon­day.

"It will pre­vent un­due pan­ic and it could as­sist by mon­i­tor­ing every­thing to en­sure that you min­i­mize if not elim­i­nate traf­fic con­ges­tion and all of these things pack­aged to­geth­er did not take place," he said.

How­ev­er, in Par­lia­ment on Tues­day Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds de­fend­ed the in­tel­li­gence agen­cies and said that the en­tire sit­u­a­tion was un­der con­trol.

An­oth­er key is­sue for the for­mer top cop is the use, or lack there­of, of body cam­eras.

Grif­fith said 1,500 cam­eras were pur­chased for of­fi­cers to use when con­duct­ing ex­er­cis­es, op­er­a­tions or are faced with volatile sit­u­a­tions.

He al­so re­spond­ed to a state­ment at­trib­uted to the com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer for the TTPS that there is no law to make wear­ing body cam­eras manda­to­ry.

"I mean you can be more ridicu­lous than that. No­body say­ing that you need a law but the per­son at the helm of the po­lice ser­vice through stan­dard op­er­a­tional pro­ce­dure, through a de­part­men­tal or­der can make it manda­to­ry. Had that been done maybe it could jus­ti­fy what the po­lice did on Sat­ur­day morn­ing or could en­sure that po­lice of­fi­cers can be cul­pa­ble," he said.


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