KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has ac­cused for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er, now Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Gary Grif­fith, of cor­rup­tion and com­plete mis­han­dling of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s firearm user’s li­cence (FUL) sys­tem.

Ac­cord­ing to Row­ley, Trinidad and To­ba­go is awash with am­mu­ni­tion be­cause of the co­pi­ous amounts of il­le­gal FUL deal­ings un­der Grif­fith’s watch. He al­so claimed FUL deal­ers were be­ing grant­ed per­mis­sion to im­port “as many guns as they can” in­to this “vi­o­lent so­ci­ety.”

Speak­ing dur­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment meet­ing in San Juan on Thurs­day night, Row­ley al­so ac­cused Grif­fith of shut­ting down sev­er­al po­lice sta­tions, in­clud­ing the Blan­chisseuse, Barataria and Mo­ri­ah po­lice sta­tion in To­ba­go, with­out con­sult­ing him or Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds.

The Prime Min­is­ter claimed 10,000 FUL ap­pli­ca­tions were al­so found in a room at the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion, which Grif­fith failed to open to the pub­lic as a po­lice sta­tion be­cause he re­pur­posed the build­ing for the Of­fice of the Firearms Sec­tion.

The PM claimed that he had heard in or­der to get out of that heavy stack of ap­pli­ca­tions, one would have to pay per­sons to get their names on a FUL list. Row­ley al­so al­leged that hand­guns were be­ing sold for $40,000 while as­sault weapons were sold from any­where be­tween $40,000 to $100,000 dur­ing the pe­ri­od in ques­tion.

Row­ley said, “This lit­tle is­land is awash with am­mu­ni­tion in par­tic­u­lar, which came in here through the wiles of peo­ple who saw prof­it po­ten­tial of am­mu­ni­tion and FUL deal­ings in this coun­try.

“I have ab­solute­ly no doubt that a sig­nif­i­cant amount of the am­mu­ni­tion that were ap­proved to come in­to this coun­try through le­gal means are end­ing up in the hands of the crim­i­nals of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He added, “What ex­act­ly was the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice do­ing grant­i­ng one deal­er per­mits to bring in 20 mil­lion rounds of am­mu­ni­tion? Is this Beirut? Is this Gaza? Is this Yemen? And then telling the Gov­ern­ment that we are on­ly con­cerned about li­censed firearms.”

As more shots were fired at Grif­fith, the Prime Min­is­ter said he be­lieves there was sig­nif­i­cant leak­age of le­gal arms and am­mu­ni­tion through­out the sys­tem, since po­lice of­fi­cers were not mak­ing reg­u­lar checks to en­sure that every deal­er could ac­count for every gun and bul­let reg­is­tered to them.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said not even the Cus­toms and Ex­cise di­vi­sion could ver­i­fy the per­mits of per­sons al­lowed to bring in am­mu­ni­tion, so the Gov­ern­ment could find out how much was be­ing sold.

How­ev­er, Grif­fith yes­ter­day said the PM’s claims were all lies.

Re­spond­ing to Row­ley dur­ing an Op­po­si­tion’s me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said while the Gov­ern­ment had called the process “a mas­sive well-oiled crim­i­nal in­dus­try,” not one FUL hold­er or deal­er has been ar­rest­ed to date.

He chal­lenged the Prime Min­is­ter to pro­vide ev­i­dence for all the al­le­ga­tions he made about le­gal firearms get­ting in­to the hands of crim­i­nal el­e­ments, as he said if is so easy for crim­i­nals to get au­to­mat­ic weapons, they won’t need to ac­quire them through le­gal firearms deal­ers.

Grif­fith said, “Again, lies, be­cause any cit­i­zen who had an au­to­mat­ic weapon would have bro­ken the law so that is im­pos­si­ble… I ask Kei­th Row­ley, you made that com­ment, go to the po­lice sta­tion and re­port it and if what you said is not true, the po­lice should charge you for wast­ing po­lice time. Be­cause you can’t be say­ing peo­ple are do­ing this. You’re not giv­ing names. You’re not giv­ing dates. You’re not giv­ing in­ci­dents when it took place, so you con­tin­ue to say things in the hope that peo­ple would be­lieve it.”

He said the Prime Min­is­ter is try­ing to give the im­pres­sion that crim­i­nals were able to get hold of le­gal arms and am­mu­ni­tion but that was not the case be­cause dur­ing his tenure as CoP, a com­pre­hen­sive au­dit was done.

Grif­fith said every po­lice sta­tion was vis­it­ed and checked for am­mu­ni­tion and weapons that were seized and so on.

In fact, Grif­fith said it was the Gov­ern­ment that shut down the use of FULs made in­to a card form with a chip.

He said that piece of tech­nol­o­gy was need­ed to check peo­ple who im­port­ed am­mu­ni­tion and as a re­sult, am­mu­ni­tion would have been stolen, missed or sold and no cor­rup­tion would take place.