Derek Achong

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has scored a le­gal vic­to­ry in his bid to keep the re­port of an au­dit in­to firearm user’s li­cences (FULs) is­sued by him and his pre­de­ces­sor Stephen Williams out of the pub­lic do­main.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad par­tial­ly up­held Grif­fith’s ju­di­cial re­view law­suit against the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC) led by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and the four re­tired po­lice of­fi­cers re­tained by it (the coun­cil) to con­duct the probe in­to the is­su­ing of FULs be­tween 2016 and 2021.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad said, “Hav­ing seen the re­port, the court is of the re­spect­ful view that it was pru­dent for the re­port to be with­held from the same form­ing part of pub­lic record in this mat­ter at this time.”

“There is po­ten­tial for rep­u­ta­tion­al harm which may be ir­re­me­di­a­ble,” he added, as he not­ed the re­port could be mis­used or mis­con­strued if im­prop­er­ly han­dled.

While Jus­tice Ram­per­sad ruled that lay­ing the ex­ec­u­tive sum­ma­ry of the re­port in Par­lia­ment, as pre­vi­ous­ly pro­posed by Dr Row­ley, was in­ap­pro­pri­ate, he ruled that it (the re­port) may be use­ful to the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), as they are both cur­rent­ly con­duct­ing par­al­lel in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the is­sue.

The out­come of the case was not a to­tal suc­cess for Grif­fith, how­ev­er, as Jus­tice Ram­per­sad de­clined to in­val­i­date the re­port over claims the coun­cil was not em­pow­ered to ini­ti­ate such a probe.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad ruled the NSC was “quite” en­ti­tled to ini­ti­ate the probe based on its far-rang­ing pow­ers un­der Sec­tion 75 of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

“There is no doubt in this court’s mind that the NSC, charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of mat­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty as a sub­com­mit­tee of the Cab­i­net, is en­ti­tled to make in­quiries in re­spect to mat­ters that touch and con­cern the gen­er­al is­sue of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty,” he said.

He al­so not­ed the re­port could be con­sid­ered by the NSC and Cab­i­net in or­der to as­sist in fine-tun­ing leg­is­la­tion based on its find­ings.

De­scrib­ing the con­tents of the re­port, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad re­ferred to it as a “mixed bag.”

“It ad­dressed the man­date but went fur­ther to leave in­fer­ences and in­nu­en­dos in re­la­tion to per­sons named in the in­ves­tiga­tive process, in­clud­ing the claimant,” he said.

While he ad­mit­ted he was not asked to con­sid­er the fact that the au­dit com­mit­tee was grant­ed ac­cess to of­fi­cial po­lice records that even­tu­al­ly formed part of their re­port, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad raised con­cerns as he point­ed to Po­lice Ser­vice Reg­u­la­tions which make it a dis­ci­pli­nary of­fence for po­lice of­fi­cers to dis­close of­fi­cial records.

“In this case, the mem­bers of the com­mit­tee are no longer ac­tive mem­bers of the po­lice ser­vice, so, there­fore, can­not be act­ing in an of­fi­cial ca­pac­i­ty as po­lice of­fi­cers,” Jus­tice Ram­per­sad said, as he sug­gest­ed po­lice records should not be in the hands of the ex­ec­u­tive.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad al­so re­ject­ed Grif­fith’s claim that his due process rights were in­fringed by the com­mit­tee’s fail­ure to seek rep­re­sen­ta­tions from him be­fore pro­duc­ing its re­port.

“The court is of the re­spect­ful view that the need to be heard does not nec­es­sar­i­ly arise at this stage,” he said, as he not­ed the com­mit­tee was mere­ly con­duct­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, not mak­ing find­ings based on it.

Grif­fith, who served as po­lice com­mis­sion­er be­tween 2018 and 2021, de­tailed the rea­sons for pur­su­ing his ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion in his af­fi­davit at­tached to it.

In the doc­u­ment, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Grif­fith said when his term was due to end, he was ini­tial­ly se­lect­ed by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) to act in the po­si­tion un­til they com­plet­ed the re­cruit­ment process for the po­si­tion he reap­plied for.

He not­ed that a high-lev­el Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial sub­se­quent­ly re­vealed to be Dr Row­ley, based on his own ad­mis­sion, con­vinced for­mer PolSC chair­man Bliss Seep­er­sad to with­draw the mer­it list for the act­ing ap­point­ment that was de­liv­ered to Pres­i­dent Paula Mae-Weekes.

Grif­fith not­ed that he first learned of the au­dit when it was an­nounced by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds in No­vem­ber 2021. He said Hinds claimed that the au­dit was or­dered af­ter the coun­cil re­ceived a “fact-find­ing re­port” from re­tired ACP Arthur Bar­ring­ton and re­tired Chief of De­fence Staff Hay­den Pritchard and the PolSC re­ceived an in­ves­tiga­tive re­port from re­tired Judge Stan­ley John.

Grif­fith claimed that when the an­nounce­ment was made, Hinds did not re­veal the le­gal ba­sis for the ap­point­ment of the com­mit­tee, its terms of ref­er­ence, or a time frame for com­ple­tion. He claimed that while the com­mit­tee con­duct­ed its in­ves­ti­ga­tions and pro­duced its re­port be­tween No­vem­ber last year and Ju­ly this year, he was nev­er con­tact­ed to be in­ter­viewed.

Grif­fith claimed af­ter he an­nounced he had formed a new po­lit­i­cal par­ty, the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA), and reap­plied for the post of po­lice com­mis­sion­er, Dr Row­ley made com­ments about the fi­nal au­dit re­port and sig­nalled his in­ten­tion to lay the ex­ec­u­tive sum­ma­ry in Par­lia­ment. He al­so claimed the re­port was leaked to a news­pa­per.

Through the law­suit, Grif­fith was seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions over what tran­spired and an or­der quash­ing the en­tire re­port or as­pects of it which deal with his per­for­mance as CoP.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Grif­fith to re­spond to the out­come but calls to his cell­phone went straight to voice­mail and he did not re­spond to mes­sages sent on What­sapp.

Grif­fith was rep­re­sent­ed by Avory Sinanan, SC, Lar­ry Lal­la and Ajay Ba­ball, while Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, Ker­wyn Gar­cia, Te­nille Ramkissoon and Kendra Mark-Gor­don rep­re­sent­ed the coun­cil. The mem­bers of the au­dit com­mit­tee were rep­re­sent­ed by Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, Rishi Dass, Brent James, Fazana Ali and Mur­vani Ojah-Ma­haraj.