Sto­ry by JESSIE-MAY VEN­TOUR

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has made yet an­oth­er ap­peal for the jus­tice sys­tem to en­sure that gun-tot­ing as­sas­sins stay be­hind bars.

Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith says they’ve suc­ceed­ed in re­duc­ing every oth­er se­ri­ous crime, while homi­cides re­main a stick­ing point.

The top cop says the courts con­tin­ue to make it tougher for him and his team of po­lice of­fi­cers to keep the streets safe for or­di­nary cit­i­zens, by re­leas­ing known shoot­ers and gun­men back in­to so­ci­ety, far too quick­ly.

“323 per­sons we ar­rest­ed and the courts let out on bail,” he notes. “We have about 800 shoot­ers in the coun­try. If you keep the shoot­ers in prison, we could re­duce the homi­cide rate.”

And Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith has promised the na­tion that there will be a heavy po­lice pres­ence for the 2020 Car­ni­val Sea­son.

The top cop says every man and woman in the ser­vice—in­clud­ing him—will be out and about, do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble to en­sure safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty are para­mount dur­ing the mega fes­ti­val.

“Last year, if you re­call, it was an in­ci­dent free car­ni­val. We in­tend to do the same thing this year and make it even big­ger, bet­ter, safer,” the Com­mis­sion­er promis­es. “In all the dif­fer­ent cor­ners, you'll be see­ing two po­lice of­fi­cers. We have an Op­er­a­tional Com­mand Cen­tre. We'll be us­ing drones. We'll have Mo­bile Com­mand Cen­tres. As I said, every sin­gle event will be an op­er­a­tion.”

He added: “I give the as­sur­ance to the pub­lic—there is no need to be fear­ful. You just need to be care­ful.”

Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith says the ded­i­ca­tion of his team has en­sured that the cur­rent crime sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try is not worse than it is, at present.

He notes the TTPS' ap­proval rat­ing has gone up from 14 per­cent in 2019, to 30 per cent this year.