Renu­ka Singh

Tough-talk­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith has no sym­pa­thy for any­one de­fend­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Grif­fith took a stern line af­ter Thurs­day night's shoot-out in Trou Macaque, Laven­tille, left five men, in­clud­ing two teenagers, dead. One po­lice of­fi­cer was grazed by a bul­let and had to re­ceive treat­ment for burns on his up­per arm.

"Peo­ple need to stop be­ing sym­pa­thet­ic with the crim­i­nals," Grif­fith said in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

"My job is to hunt down and ar­rest crim­i­nals."

On Thurs­day just af­ter 9 pm, po­lice re­ports in­di­cat­ed, there was a shoot-out with five men and the men were killed.

How­ev­er, a me­dia re­port said that eye­wit­ness­es had con­flict­ing ac­counts of what oc­curred. One woman, a grand­moth­er of one of the boys, said his hands were up when he was killed.

"The pub­lic should ask if these so-called wit­ness­es were in the room and saw the fire­fight to know what hap­pened...or that the men had their hands in the air. The an­swer is no.

"How many times do we hear af­ter a sus­pect is held or shot that he was a 'good boy' or they knew he didn't do any­thing?" he asked.

Grif­fith said he found it in­ter­est­ing that some peo­ple are say­ing the men were shot by po­lice in an ex­tra­ju­di­cial killing when they were play­ing cards.

"Yet, a bul­let ripped through the jack­et of a po­lice of­fi­cer, miss­ing his chest by inch­es," he said.

"That jack of spades have a sharp edge."

Grif­fith said if the men were in­deed play­ing cards, why was one po­lice of­fi­cer treat­ed for burns af­ter be­ing grazed by a bul­let.

"So it was an imag­i­nary man in the room that did this?" he asked.

He said that there were very few peo­ple who were sym­pa­this­ing with the crim­i­nal el­e­ment and con­demn­ing the po­lice for their ac­tions.

"I ask how would they have felt if the bul­let went one inch to the left and killed the of­fi­cer?"

CoP crit­i­cised

Grif­fith was crit­i­cised on so­cial me­dia by for­mer jus­tice min­is­ter Christlyn Moore and for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) sen­a­tor at­tor­ney Wayne Sturge.

Sturge open­ly crit­cised Grif­fith's strong de­fence of the po­lice af­ter the shoot-out.

"Be­cause of high crim­i­nal­i­ty most cit­i­zens are un­con­cerned when the po­lice in this coun­try en­gage in ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings, that is un­til they are di­rect­ly af­fect­ed," Sturge said.

"Most peo­ple are pre­pared to go with the ver­sion giv­en by the po­lice be­cause the vic­tims are 'good boys'. The re­al­i­ty though is that while many of the ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings can be jus­ti­fied, there ex­ists a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of such killings that can­not be jus­ti­fied.

"My point is this, the mu­nic­i­pal courts ex­ist for a rea­son, re­gard­less of why we think the way we think about peo­ple we de­scribe as 'good boys'. A civilised coun­try which has re­spect for the rule of law and the sacro­sanct na­ture of hu­man life will de­mand bet­ter," Sturge said.

Sturge said a Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er who de­scribed young black men from the ghet­to as "cock­roach­es" should be a cause for grave con­cern.

Sturge re­called the fate of for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Ran­dolph Bur­roughs, who was al­so pop­u­lar for his strong stance against crime.

"Ran­dolph Bur­roughs' wan­na-be po­lice of­fi­cers must know that in a coun­try where there are still de­cent folk, there will be a day of reck­on­ing, as had hap­pened with the events which oc­curred in Moru­ga. Ran­dolph Bur­roughs nev­er re­cov­ered from his crim­i­nal charges, and lucky for him the charges weren’t mur­der, a word to the wise is suf­fi­cient," Sturge said.

"The penal­ty for most of the crimes these shoot­ing vic­tims are sus­pect­ed of, even where they are found guilty, is not death, and an ex­tra­ju­di­cial killing that can­not be jus­ti­fied is not mere­ly a sen­tence of death for one of Gary's cock­roach­es, it is state-spon­sored mur­der done with the ac­qui­es­cence of the tax­pay­ers," Sturge said.

Moore al­so took to so­cial me­dia to ques­tion the killings by the po­lice. She post­ed the com­ments from Grif­fith that the po­lice will "out­gun" the crim­i­nals and de­scribed the rhetoric as "dan­ger­ous".

"Do I need to say that this rhetoric is dan­ger­ous, reck­less, un­sci­en­tif­ic and will get in­no­cent peo­ple killed? In­no­cent po­lice of­fi­cers and civil­ians? Where will you be when the out­gun war starts?" she asked.

But Grif­fith dis­missed both of them.

"Moore and Sturge have their jobs to do and I have mine," he said.

"Many are aware of the job of Wayne Sturge. If he is against my ac­tions, I am so shocked," Grif­fith said sar­cas­ti­cal­ly.

"It seems that too many peo­ple try­ing to be­come judge and ju­ry. A po­lice of­fi­cer was in­jured and no­body is talk­ing about how the of­fi­cers could have lost their lives in the line of du­ty,' he said.

'Ar­moured ve­hi­cles for cops'

Grif­fith is al­so seek­ing to res­ur­rect a part of his crime plan hatched dur­ing his tenure as min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

"Ar­moured ve­hi­cles will help with the fight against crime," he said.

Grif­fith said the plan to buy the ve­hi­cles was shelved when he demit­ted of­fice.

He said that the ar­moured vans were ex­pect­ed to help pro­tect of­fi­cers while do­ing their jobs. He said peo­ple who crit­i­cised the move were "be­ing im­ma­ture".

"Every sin­gle coun­try has it. Trinidad had it about 30 years ago. Do they want the po­lice to be vul­ner­a­ble?" Grif­fith asked.