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Sunday, July 13, 2025

Nakhid: Gary must resign as Top CoP

by

Renuka Singh
1608 days ago
20210215
UNC Senator David Nakhid

UNC Senator David Nakhid

Parliament

Swift jus­tice does not mean swift re­venge.

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Sen­a­tor David Nakhid said that Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith must re­sign over the al­le­ga­tions that the two men who died in po­lice cus­tody were bad­ly beat­en.

Hours af­ter Nakhid post­ed a video on so­cial me­dia ques­tion­ing the deaths and the sub­se­quent re­port that one of the men de­tained for the mur­der of An­drea Bhar­rat was beat­en for 45 min­utes, Griffth post­ed a me­dia re­lease ask­ing why Nakhid was con­stant­ly at­tack­ing the po­lice ser­vice.

In his me­dia re­lease, the Com­mis­sion­er al­so ques­tioned whether Nakhid’s views were that of the en­tire Op­po­si­tion.

Grif­fith said that Nakhid was spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion.

“His post was ut­ter rub­bish and ver­bal gym­nas­tics,” Nakhid said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

The Sen­a­tor said that the Com­mis­sion­er “can­not in­tim­i­date” him.

“He should do the right thing,” Nakhid said.

“When our Op­po­si­tion leader said that swift jus­tice should pre­vail, it does not mean swift re­venge it does not mean swift in­jus­tice,” Nakhid said.

Nakhid said that the peo­ple held for ques­tion­ing should be in­ter­ro­gat­ed, but not beat­en to death as sub­se­quent re­ports stat­ed.

Days af­ter Bhar­rat was kid­napped, the po­lice held five men, two- An­drew Mor­ris and Joel Bal­con died af­ter in­ter­ro­ga­tion.

A pri­vate au­top­sy done on Mor­ris showed he died of blunt force trau­ma and was bad­ly beat­en. A me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tion de­scribed a video which showed that Mor­ris was beat­en for 45 min­utes while pro­claim­ing his in­no­cence. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Mor­ris rent­ed the ve­hi­cle to the man who was de­tained for Bhar­rat’s kid­nap­ping and mur­der.

In his me­dia state­ment, the CoP said that nei­ther he, not the TTPS ever said that the sus­pect “fell off a chair and died”.

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to the TTPS me­dia re­lease af­ter Mor­ris’ death, the TTPS on Feb­ru­ary 4 said that while be­ing at­tend­ed to at the hos­pi­tal, Mor­ris who was seat­ed on a chair, fell over and had to be as­sist­ed. He lat­er went to an­oth­er room to give a urine sam­ple and again fell and had to be as­sist­ed. The TTPS said that Mor­ris fell three times and lat­er died.

“(Grif­fith) did not say whether a prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion was done around these cir­cum­stances. He did not say any­thing else,” Nakhid said.

“If the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice would like to tell the na­tion what man­u­al, what po­lice man­u­al where that is al­lowed, we would like to know. We are ful­ly be­hind the good of­fi­cers of the Po­lice Ser­vice but if we have a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, who in­stead of fol­low­ing prop­er pro­to­col in find­ing out and pros­e­cut­ing a case in­stead of go­ing be­hind peo­ple who post on Face­book,” Nakhid said.

Nakhid said that the Com­mis­sion­er tries to in­tim­i­date peo­ple who crit­i­cise him on so­cial me­dia.

“This is not an at­tack on the po­lice ser­vice,” he said.

“This is a scruti­ny and we should hold these peo­ple to ac­count,” he said.

In the me­dia post, Grif­fith said that Nakhid had al­ready “ad­ju­di­cat­ed” the al­leged po­lice killings and found the po­lice of­fi­cers guilty.

“It is not iron­ic, it is down­right hyp­o­crit­i­cal be­cause I have made my state­ments and so has the Law As­so­ci­a­tion and so has the Ro­man Catholic Church based on what the Ex­press wrote based on video footage of the beat­ing of a man who you don’t know if he’s guilty or not,” Nakhid said.

Nakhid said that if Grif­fith is un­able to with­stand that scruti­ny and must re­spond to every­one on so­cial me­dia, then he is not “fit for pur­pose”.

“Let him find a job that suits those qual­i­ties but not Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice,” Nakhid said.


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