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Thursday, June 19, 2025

Racist post sparks Facebook furore

Female cop in hot water

by

Renuka Singh
2322 days ago
20190208
Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith.

Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith.

Shirley Bahadur

A so­cial me­dia post deemed racist, which was made by a To­ba­go-based fe­male po­lice of­fi­cer, has been re­ferred to Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith.

In a brief in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Grif­fith con­firmed that he called the of­fi­cer and di­rect­ed her to meet with him on Mon­day.

The fe­male of­fi­cer yes­ter­day post­ed the com­ment: “Them peo­ple nasty boi wow..the (sic) re­al­ly say the best In­di­an is ah dead one yes..gosh boi dey greedy and nasty.”

Her com­ment was made on a sto­ry shared by To­ba­go re­porter Cas­san­dra Thomp­son-Forbes which de­tailed the loss of a busi­ness place in To­ba­go.

Al­though the com­ment was sub­se­quent­ly delet­ed by Thomp­son-Forbes, screen­shots of it were sent to the CoP by for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) min­is­ter and so­cial me­dia ac­tivist De­vant Ma­haraj.

“A po­lice of­fi­cer is a po­lice of­fi­cer in and out of uni­form and I in­tend to take de­ci­sive ac­tion against any­one whose ac­tions brings the po­lice ser­vice in­to dis­re­pute,” Grif­fith said yes­ter­day.

While Grif­fith re­fused to di­vulge any ac­tion that can be tak­en against the of­fi­cer, Guardian Me­dia was told that the CoP has the au­thor­i­ty to im­me­di­ate­ly dis­ci­pline any of­fi­cer through sus­pen­sion or dis­missal.

On the same thread, for­mer Jus­tice Min­is­ter Christlyn Moore al­so ques­tioned the of­fi­cer’s con­duct, ask­ing if the “po­lice ser­vice still has a code of con­duct? Does bring­ing the ser­vice in­to dis­re­pute still at­tract dis­missal?”

Just three days ago, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad warned that so­cial me­dia posts can have se­ri­ous con­se­quences.

In an 18-page rul­ing on Wednes­day, Seep­er­sad warned so­cial me­dia users that they may be forced to pay for the things they say on so­cial me­dia. In his rul­ing then, Seep­er­sad said that far too of­ten, so­cial me­dia is used as a fo­rum “to en­gage in this type of ir­re­spon­si­ble and cru­el dis­course.” He said that it should not be al­lowed to con­tin­ue and said the court would “mould and ap­ply the com­mon law in a man­ner which gives some de­gree of pro­tec­tion to cit­i­zens.”


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