Gail Alexan­der

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith says there’s a “mas­sive, well-or­ches­trat­ed, clan­des­tine mis­sion” to un­der­mine him.

“The ha­tred and fear for my re­turn by some is mind-bog­gling, and they have put it as their mis­sion to do all they can to pre­vent it,” he said via a state­ment yes­ter­day, af­ter re­turn­ing from va­ca­tion leave.

“The de­trac­tors and de­fend­ers of crim­i­nal el­e­ments, in­side and out­side the Po­lice Ser­vice, have al­most ex­haust­ed their vom­it and lies, in their last-ditch des­per­ate at­tempt, in the hope that their trash talk of false­hoods, can in­flu­ence the (PSC’s) Mer­it List, and af­fect the se­lec­tion process.”

Cit­ing suc­cess in de­feat­ing “fel­low ho­n­ourable ri­val ap­pli­cants” in the 2018 se­lec­tion process and list­ing ac­com­plish­ments, Grif­fith said the on­ly pos­si­bil­i­ty de­trac­tors and those in­volved in the mis­sion against him had for him not to be re-ap­point­ed wasn’t in a fair race, “but through a mas­sive, well-or­ches­trat­ed clan­des­tine mis­sion to un­der­mine me with lies, which us­es cer­tain me­dia con­tacts in the process.”

Grif­fith said he un­der­stood some may be un­com­fort­able with his lead­er­ship style.

“So the crim­i­nal el­e­ments, and the few rogue ‘Tro­jan Horse’ po­lice of­fi­cers who’ve been af­fect­ed by my ac­tions, would in­deed be des­per­ate to see my back, which is why they keep run­ning to their me­dia con­tacts to com­plain - be­cause I’ve af­fect­ed their big crim­i­nal en­ter­prise.”

He slammed news­pa­per ar­ti­cles on a re­port from a com­mit­tee in­volv­ing two re­tired se­cu­ri­ty heads who probed al­le­ga­tions of a li­cense-for-sale rack­et in the grant­i­ng of Firearms User Li­cens­es (FULs).

On Wednes­day in Par­lia­ment, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley replied to Op­po­si­tion queries on whether the re­port on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion will be made pub­lic.

Call­ing yes­ter­day for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of how the re­port was leaked, Grif­fith ques­tioned if the news­pa­per and jour­nal­ist even has such a re­port.

“I chal­lenge them to show any such re­port which is signed by both mem­bers of this com­mit­tee, which by the way, I ap­proved and there­by al­lowed to pro­ceed to any part of the Po­lice Ser­vice to ac­quire da­ta for their re­port.”

Grif­fith’s con­tract end­ed on Au­gust 17.

The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion has been in­volved in the se­lec­tion process for the post since June 17. That process now ap­pears on hold.

Grif­fith de­tailed poli­cies he had en­act­ed that caused of­fi­cers to be charged with ex­tor­tion for the is­su­ing of firearms, pre­vent­ed oth­ers in sta­tions from black­mail­ing cit­i­zens to ac­quire same, halt­ed a $100 mil­lion-plus per an­num over­time rack­et and ex­pose/charged of­fi­cers for us­ing State equip­ment to es­cort ve­hi­cles with­out au­tho­ri­sa­tion.

Among those he claimed were against him was a “gun­delero” who com­plains about peo­ple get­ting too many firearms, in­clud­ing 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion.

“But they on­ly voiced con­cerns af­ter they ap­plied and ac­quired sev­er­al firearms them­selves, ex­pos­ing their own hypocrisy be­cause they have mul­ti­ple firearms and 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion.”

He said the “last-ditch at­tempt to dis­cred­it him and TTPS” was to use a re­port com­piled by a two-man team to do a se­ries of ar­ti­cles, “seen by no one oth­er than a jour­nal­ist.”

Grif­fith said the re­port used words like “sources,” “al­leged,” “ru­moured” and “in­tel­li­gence” be­cause “they’re de­void of any wit­ness­es, ac­cusers, facts, da­ta or shred of ev­i­dence.”

“I wouldn’t be sur­prised if on­ly one mem­ber signed this re­port and pre­sent­ed it, hence this so-called re­port is the per­son­al bi­ased view of one cit­i­zen, and not a com­mit­tee as tout­ed.”

He said it was the “same re­gur­gi­tat­ed vom­it” by one news­pa­per every Sun­day, re­peat­ing the “same lies” from one in­di­vid­ual, who “ob­vi­ous­ly has an agen­da.”

He said the per­son has no post in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

He said it was strange none of the in­ves­tiga­tive bod­ies - PSC, Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions or TTPS re­ceived the re­port, but the news­pa­per did.

“If any of these ac­cu­sa­tions are even re­mote­ly true, then who­ev­er leaked this re­port has now tipped off crim­i­nal el­e­ments, giv­ing them op­por­tu­ni­ty to cov­er their tracks, which can be con­sid­ered a crim­i­nal of­fence via tip­ping off, through the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act. Who knows if this was in­deed the plan, but no mat­ter the rea­son, an in­ves­ti­ga­tion seems fit­ting.”

He added, “I’m wait­ing for them to ex­haust their vom­it of des­per­ate lies, and then would re­veal all the facts via the au­tho­rised in­ves­tiga­tive bod­ies - and not one per­son who has no in­ves­tiga­tive au­thor­i­ty, but with an ob­vi­ous agen­da that pro­duced the­o­ries and per­cep­tions based on al­le­ga­tions and ru­mours, and sub­mit­ted a re­port con­ve­nient­ly just pri­or to the clo­sure of the process for the ap­point­ment of a CoP.’’

He said rev­e­la­tions will show “their base­less con­spir­a­cy has failed mis­er­ably, which was ex­posed when an ap­pli­cant for the CoP post was even boast­ing that they’d find a way to have me re­moved from the process be­cause of his knowl­edge that he could nev­er ac­quire more points than me via the as­sess­ment process.”

“Let them keep bray­ing - evil could nev­er win.”