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Saturday, July 26, 2025

Under the microscope: Gary Griffith seeks second term as CoP

by

Joshua Seemungal
1463 days ago
20210725

In his three years in of­fice, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has pushed him­self, and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), to the fore­front of the na­tion­al psy­che.

Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly served as na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, Grif­fith is no stranger to the lime­light, but dur­ing his tenure as com­mis­sion­er, he has be­come one of so­ci­ety’s most po­lar­is­ing fig­ures.

To his sup­port­ers–a hero ded­i­cat­ed to tak­ing on crim­i­nals, but to his crit­ics–a re­lent­less mega­lo­ma­ni­ac.

On Au­gust 6, 2018, Grif­fith be­came the coun­try’s first sub­stan­tive Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er since for­mer com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs re­signed in 2012.

The for­mer de­fence force cap­tain’s ap­point­ment came at a time of weak­ened pub­lic con­fi­dence in the Po­lice Ser­vice.

From 2013 to 2017, ac­cord­ing to TTPS sta­tis­tics pro­vid­ed to Un­spun and the Sun­day Guardian, the coun­try av­er­aged up­wards of 437 mur­ders and 12,160 se­ri­ous crimes per year. By the time Grif­fith ar­rived in of­fice in Au­gust, the coun­try was al­ready hurtling to­wards the 500 mur­der mark for the first time since 2009. 2018 end­ed with 517 mur­ders.

The ser­vice’s prob­lems ex­tend­ed well be­yond the crime fight.

In­ter­nal­ly, the ser­vice faced long-stand­ing man­age­ment is­sues with pro­mo­tions, dis­ci­pline, crim­i­nal­i­ty, as well as ac­count­ing.

"There will be no hon­ey­moon pe­ri­od. I do not ex­pect any. I have an enor­mous task, but this is not go­ing to be a Grif­fith show. I in­tend to work, as much as pos­si­ble, with all stake­hold­ers...What I can as­sure you is that my job and my in­ten­tion is to en­sure pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence is brought back to the po­lice ser­vice," Grif­fith said at his un­veil­ing at a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­istry press con­fer­ence in Au­gust 2018.

"I will be do­ing much less talk and much more ac­tion this time around."

While Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith kept his promise for ac­tion, there has been a lot of talk­ing as well. His no-non­sense, con­tro­ver­sial lead­er­ship style has been com­pared to one of the coun­try’s most well-known for­mer com­mis­sion­ers, the late Ran­dolph Bur­roughs. A com­par­i­son Grif­fith re­ject­ed on more than one oc­ca­sion.

February Police Commissioner Gary Griffith speaks to a group of women during the  Calypso Fiesta on Saturday at Skinner Park, San Fernando.

February Police Commissioner Gary Griffith speaks to a group of women during the Calypso Fiesta on Saturday at Skinner Park, San Fernando.

TONY HOWELL

Con­tract comes to an end Au­gust 18, will he get the nod from the PSC?

With Grif­fith’s con­tract com­ing to an end on Au­gust 18, of this year, the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) has a big de­ci­sion on its hands.

Grif­fith is seek­ing an­oth­er term in of­fice. On June 29, when he an­nounced his de­ci­sion to reap­ply for the CoP po­si­tion, Grif­fith said he knew that he was hat­ed by some of his own po­lice of­fi­cers, la­belling them the "Hate The Po­lice Squad."

"Whether you like me or don’t like me, I nev­er came to a job for friends. The day any­one does some­thing to please peo­ple or be pop­u­lar you will lose that cal­i­bre of lead­er­ship. It’s not try­ing to be pop­u­lar, it’s do­ing the right thing," Grif­fith said.

"Yes there are polls where 80 per cent odd of the pop­u­la­tion has sup­port­ed me, and I wish to thank you...some of the 20 per cent did not want change and some­times peo­ple ben­e­fit from chaos, as it pre­sent­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties. So by me stop­ping their ac­tions and busi­ness, ob­vi­ous­ly they will not be hap­py with me.

"Some of the haters mo­bilised and used a smear cam­paign which was un­for­tu­nate. But to those haters, yes you have been a very big av­enue to help me make this de­ci­sion. So to all of the per­sons who hat­ed me, dis­cred­it­ed me, tried to at­tack my fam­i­ly, de­monise me, as I stat­ed, I am an in­de­pen­dent man. So af­ter speak­ing to my wife, she has giv­en me per­mis­sion to state that I in­tend to reap­ply for the post of CoP."

To those who spent the last three years at­tack­ing him, Grif­fith said, "it is be­cause of you, you have strength­ened me and my re­solve to reap­ply."

Four oth­er peo­ple have ap­plied for the po­si­tion of CoP: Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent An­dre Nor­ton, Act­ing Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Anand Rame­sar, Su­per­in­ten­dent An­drew John, and Act­ing Sergeant Neil Nar­ine.

Who will get the nod from the PSC?

Time will tell, but this me­dia house delved in­to Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith’s first term in of­fice.

Dr Ramesh De­osaran, crim­i­nol­o­gist and for­mer chair­man of the PSC de­scribed Grif­fith's three-year tenure as a rock-and-roll ex­er­cise.

"I think the last three years un­der the com­mis­sion­er was a rock-and-roll ex­er­cise, as it were. Ups and downs, and this is not to crit­i­cise him. I think he has his per­son­al­i­ty, as every­body knows."

Crime sta­tis­tics

One of the main pa­ra­me­ters that po­lice com­mis­sion­ers are judged up­on is crime sta­tis­tics.

Ac­cord­ing to TTPS fig­ures, in Grif­fith’s first full year in of­fice, 2019, the num­ber of re­port­ed crimes de­clined by more than 2,500 when com­pared to 2018.

In keep­ing with the down­ward trend, 2020 saw the largest re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crimes in 30 years. The crime de­tec­tion rate in both years, how­ev­er, de­clined from 2017 and 2018.

Be­tween 2019 and 2020, there was an an­nu­al av­er­age of 2,263 rob­beries–544 less than the av­er­age be­tween 2013 and 2018.

Rob­bery de­tec­tion rates, how­ev­er, were the low­est since 2013.

Be­tween 2019 and 2020, there was an an­nu­al av­er­age of 85 kid­nap­pings–15 less than the av­er­age be­tween 2013 and 2018.

In one of the most high-pro­file kid­nap­ping cas­es, dur­ing Grif­fith’s tenure, the moth­er of three, Na­tal­ie Pol­lon­ais was res­cued, in Sep­tem­ber 2018, four days af­ter be­ing kid­napped in San Fer­nan­do.

Af­ter her res­cue, she wrote to the com­mis­sion­er per­son­al­ly to thank him.

Mur­ders

Ac­cord­ing to TTPS fig­ures, in 2019, dur­ing Grif­fith’s first term, T&T record­ed 536 mur­ders–the high­est num­ber since 2008. Of those mur­ders, on­ly 42 were de­tect­ed–a low de­tec­tion rate of 7.8 per cent.

In com­par­i­son, the sec­ond-low­est an­nu­al mur­der de­tec­tion rate since 2013 was 13.6 per cent.

In 2020, T&T record­ed 393 mur­ders–the low­est num­ber since 2012. That year 57 mur­ders were de­tect­ed, at a rate of 14.5 per cent.

Over­all de­tec­tion rates have re­mained a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge for the TTPS over the last sev­er­al years.

PCA com­plaints

One of the ar­eas that Grif­fith’s tenure as com­mis­sion­er has come un­der in­tense scruti­ny is po­lice-re­lat­ed killings.

De­spite this, com­plaints to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) in 2019-2020 de­clined by 32 re­ports from 2018-2019.

But dur­ing 2019-2020, there was a surge in po­lice killings. There were 66 fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings and 31 non-fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings–the most record­ed in the pre­vi­ous eight an­nu­al re­ports.

Re­duc­tion in 2020–pol­i­cy or pan­dem­ic?

In 2020, there were sig­nif­i­cant de­clines in over­all crimes, mur­ders, rob­beries, and kid­nap­pings. Some of the de­clines con­tin­ued in­to 2021.

Up un­til June, ac­cord­ing to the TTPS, there were 4,321 crime re­ports and 177 mur­ders.

But, how much of the de­creas­es in sev­er­al types of crimes could be at­trib­uted to Grif­fith’s poli­cies, as op­posed to the pan­dem­ic?

Guardian Me­dia re­quest­ed an in­ter­view with the com­mis­sion­er ear­li­er this month, but he de­clined.

He said he did not want to prej­u­dice the se­lec­tion process for the next com­mis­sion­er.

February 2019: Poice Commissioner Gary Griffith takes part in a house search during an exercise in Beetham Gardens.

February 2019: Poice Commissioner Gary Griffith takes part in a house search during an exercise in Beetham Gardens.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Crim­i­nol­o­gists weigh in

Dr Randy Seep­er­sad

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad con­firmed that there has been a huge de­crease in crimes in T&T.

How­ev­er, he at­trib­uted the de­crease to the re­stric­tion in move­ment caused by the pan­dem­ic and cor­re­spond­ing pub­lic health mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed by the Gov­ern­ment.

"There’s a drop in crime, but you can’t say the drop in crime is be­cause of the per­for­mance of the po­lice ser­vice. The drop in crime has to do with lock­down mea­sures. Right, and it’s some­thing schol­ar­ship (re­search) around the world over is show­ing–that when these lock­down mea­sures were put in place, crime de­clined,” Dr Seep­er­sad said.

"So, un­for­tu­nate­ly, we can­not take the crime mea­sure­ment to eval­u­ate the per­for­mance of the po­lice ser­vice or the com­mis­sion­er in any kind of sys­tem­at­ic way."

Dr Dau­rius Figueira

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Dau­rius Figueira agreed that the de­crease could not be at­trib­uted to the po­lice ser­vice or the com­mis­sion­er’s poli­cies. He be­lieved the de­crease in mur­ders was large­ly down to a peace agree­ment be­tween pre­vi­ous­ly war­ring crim­i­nal gangs in Port-of-Spain.

The change, he said, came af­ter the po­lice-in­volved killing of three men–Is­rael Clin­ton, Joel Ja­cobs, and Noel Di­a­mond–in Mor­vant on June 27, 2020.

"That was when the new or­der–the new or­der of the game in Trinidad and To­ba­go was ex­pressed in T&T when you had or­gan­ised demon­stra­tions in Port-of-Spain through con­flict­ed spaces of gang­land, where peo­ple were mov­ing freely through protest­ing and to­day, that peace holds," Dr Figueira said.

"The tra­di­tion­al heart of gang­land is now like slum­ber­land, get­ting on with mak­ing mon­ey."

Com­par­a­tive­ly, in 2020, British po­lice re­port­ed its biggest an­nu­al de­crease in crime since 2010. The Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics and Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ences re­port­ed: "As lock­down mea­sures eased be­tween June and Sep­tem­ber 2020, crime rates across the coun­try start­ed to rise in most cat­e­gories, but re­mained be­low pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els."

In a study of 34 states in the Unit­ed States, the US’s Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for COVID-19 and Crim­i­nal Jus­tice found that homi­cide rates de­clined at the start of the pan­dem­ic. How­ev­er, there was a sharp in­crease in sum­mer 2020. The Com­mis­sion stat­ed that while homi­cides de­clined from sum­mer 2020 in­to ear­ly 2021, they re­mained high­er than pre-pan­dem­ic years.

Clos­er to home, Venezuela, Puer­to Ri­co, Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos, all record­ed few­er mur­ders in 2020 than in 2019.

Dr Ramesh De­osaran

Crime in T&T, ac­cord­ing to crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Ramesh De­osaran, re­mains the po­lice ser­vice’s Achilles heel. He said it was an is­sue that has con­tin­ued in­to Grif­fith’s tenure.

"We have a state of emer­gency, which would im­ply more peo­ple should be in­doors–whether you are a crim­i­nal or law-abid­ing cit­i­zen–and now we are head­ed to­wards 200 mur­ders for the first half of the year...I mean, the first year Gary Grif­fith came in, the sec­ond year, those were the high­est rate of mur­ders in the coun­try," Dr De­osaran said.

"So, se­ri­ous crimes and mur­ders, the for­ma­tion of gangs re­main as they were. The bor­ders re­main porous as they were. So, I just don’t know how to sum­marise this."

The crim­i­nol­o­gist said, how­ev­er, that it could mean that the coun­try’s crime prob­lems are so com­pli­cat­ed and re­quire so many ad­di­tion­al re­sources, that the com­mis­sion­er will not be able to do things as he would like.

"You need a lot of back-up (sic), in terms of deputies, as­sis­tant com­mis­sion­ers, and up­per man­age­ment be­cause, as I said, the de­tec­tion rates re­main the same, gang for­ma­tion con­tin­ues to ac­cel­er­ate in par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble ar­eas. When you look at the num­bers–the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of gangs and am­mu­ni­tion...the ar­rests be­ing made, white-col­lar crime...all these ma­jor in­di­ca­tors aren’t prop­er­ly treat­ed as yet," the for­mer chair­man of the PSC said.

"I’m not re­flect­ing this on the com­mis­sion­er him­self be­cause you have a whole po­lice ser­vice. You have the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force, the Coast Guard."

SORT

Short­ly af­ter en­ter­ing of­fice, Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith launched his brain­child–the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT).

The team’s mem­bers, which in­clud­ed for­mer sol­diers, were hand­picked by the com­mis­sion­er to tack­le elab­o­rate crim­i­nal op­er­a­tions.

Live on na­tion­al tele­vi­sion, on De­cem­ber 3, 2018, SORT’s first ma­jor bust took place in the af­flu­ent neigh­bour­hood of West­moor­ings. Four peo­ple were ar­rest­ed and charged with pos­ses­sion for the traf­fick­ing of co­caine and mar­i­jua­na.

The $3.8 mil­lion bust would be the first of many high­ly pub­li­cised raids that boost­ed pub­lic con­fi­dence in Grif­fith.

In Feb­ru­ary 2019, A SORT-led op­er­a­tion al­leged­ly cracked a sex and drug-ring op­er­a­tion in West­moor­ings and Ari­api­ta Av­enue. 18 sus­pects were ar­rest­ed and $5 mil­lion was seized.

In Oc­to­ber 2019, 69 peo­ple–from ages 19 to 70–some held in cages at the Trans­formed Life Min­istry (TLM), Arou­ca, were res­cued dur­ing an­oth­er SORT-led raid, with the help of Guardian Me­dia who ob­tained cru­cial in­for­ma­tion about the ac­tiv­i­ties at TLM over a two-month in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The head of the Min­istry, Pas­tor Glen Awong, was charged with kid­nap­ping, false im­pris­on­ment and traf­fick­ing in per­sons.

In No­vem­ber 2019, there was an­oth­er dra­mat­ic raid at an af­flu­ent neigh­bour­hood–this one in St Clair. Busi­ness­man Patrick Aboud Jnr was charged with five of­fences, in­clud­ing pos­ses­sion of drugs, an il­le­gal firearm, and am­mu­ni­tion.

Then, in Sep­tem­ber 2020, SORT of­fi­cers raid­ed the pop­u­lar Drugs Sou-Sou op­er­a­tion in La Hor­quet­ta. Po­lice ini­tial­ly seized $22 mil­lion, but the mon­ey was giv­en back hours lat­er. In­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed there were po­lice and de­fence force of­fi­cers in­volved in the al­leged il­le­gal scheme.

Days af­ter the raid, the op­er­a­tion faced pub­lic scruti­ny af­ter videos were leaked al­leged­ly show­ing a mem­ber of the team stuff­ing ev­i­dence, al­leged­ly mon­ey, in­to his bul­let­proof vest.

The video placed Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith on the back­foot.

Al­though it was a SORT op­er­a­tion, he in­sist­ed the ac­cused was not a po­lice of­fi­cer, but a de­fence force mem­ber. In Oc­to­ber 2020, po­lice raid­ed the op­er­a­tion again. They seized more than $7 mil­lion in cash, as well as doc­u­ments and elec­tron­ics. Four of­fi­cers were sus­pend­ed, while 11 oth­ers were trans­ferred.

DSS founder Keron Clarke was lat­er charged with two counts of mon­ey laun­der­ing in ear­ly 2021.

SORT al­so played in­stru­men­tal roles in many oth­er key in­ves­ti­ga­tions and ex­er­cis­es.

But while SORT’s suc­cess­es were laud­ed by many, the unit al­so faced se­vere crit­i­cism from some for its al­leged in­volve­ment in sev­er­al fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings.

In Au­gust 2019, 19-year-old Rochy­on Ashter­man and his girl­friend Kris­tan Ser­ries were shot dead in a ve­hi­cle al­leged­ly by SORT of­fi­cers in San­ta Cruz.

In De­cem­ber 2019, Michael Thomas was killed in Va­len­cia.

In Jan­u­ary 2020, SORT of­fi­cers al­leged­ly shot dead Glean Bain, who was ac­cused of plot­ting to kill a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer.

In April 2020, three men were killed, while an­oth­er was left in­jured in La Canoa.

In May 2020, al­leged gang leader Nigel May­ers, aka Du­fu, was killed in Mor­vant. SORT of­fi­cers claimed that they were shot at first by the men in all the killings. Some res­i­dents and rel­a­tives of those shot claimed they were in­no­cent and that the SORT of­fi­cers that were present lied about the cir­cum­stances.

In Feb­ru­ary 2021, how­ev­er, the deaths of two men had se­ri­ous con­se­quences for a unit al­ready un­der the mi­cro­scope.

Two sus­pects in the An­drea Bharatt case, An­drew Mor­ris and Joel Bal­con, al­leged­ly died while in cus­tody. Mor­ris was ar­rest­ed by po­lice on Jan­u­ary 31, 2021, and died on Feb­ru­ary, 1. Po­lice claimed he re­fused med­ical treat­ment and food, and died af­ter falling off a chair at the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal.

Bal­con was ar­rest­ed on Jan­u­ary 31, 2021, and died on Feb­ru­ary 8 at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex. Po­lice claimed he was in­jured while try­ing to es­cape ar­rest and sub­se­quent­ly hos­pi­talised. Au­top­sies re­vealed that both men died of blunt force trau­ma.

14 po­lice of­fi­cers and six sol­diers were ques­tioned in con­nec­tion with their deaths. The in­ci­dent re­mains un­der PCA in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

In April, for­mer SORT head Mark Her­nan­dez was charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice con­cern­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Pend­ing the out­come of his mat­ter, he was sus­pend­ed and lat­er re­placed by new SORT head Su­per­in­ten­dent Roger Alexan­der in April this year.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Figueira, "The man­ner in which the lead­er­ship was changed sim­ply in­di­cates the modus operan­di. What is most ap­par­ent, to me, is with the change of lead­er­ship comes a change in the modus operan­di of the unit, which makes it very rel­e­vant and po­tent now."

December 2018: Police Commissioner Gary Griffith with members of the Special Operations Response Team who rescued a kidnapped Penal family, Aaron Sooknanan his wife, Paula and two children, Ricardo and Isabella, as they stand guard outside the San Fernando General Hospital.

December 2018: Police Commissioner Gary Griffith with members of the Special Operations Response Team who rescued a kidnapped Penal family, Aaron Sooknanan his wife, Paula and two children, Ricardo and Isabella, as they stand guard outside the San Fernando General Hospital.

RISHI RAGOONATH

Re­mark­able highs, con­tro­ver­sial Lows

Grif­fith’s term as Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er has been full of re­mark­able highs and con­tro­ver­sial lows. Af­ter Grif­fith’s first 100 days in of­fice, Dr Ramesh De­osaran gave him a score of eight out of ten.

And, while De­osaran was not pre­pared to score him again, out of re­spect for the ap­pli­ca­tion process, the crim­i­nol­o­gist be­lieved Grif­fith found things more dif­fi­cult with time.

"Lat­er on, we be­gan to see, and he, him­self, be­gan to see the se­ri­ous chal­lenges in man­ag­ing an or­gan­i­sa­tion that is com­plex with such heavy re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty on one side and the pol­i­tics on the oth­er side. And, I think he even­tu­al­ly be­came some­thing of a lone ranger, leav­ing the po­lice ser­vice a lit­tle too far be­hind in my view," Dr De­osaran said.

"So, you have to judge him as an in­di­vid­ual to do the work, but you al­so have to con­sid­er whether the or­gan­i­sa­tion, as a whole, for which he is re­spon­si­ble has suc­ceed­ed. So, when he tells the pub­lic that he got 80 per cent per­for­mance–his per­for­mance–and 59 per cent went for the po­lice ser­vice per­for­mance–that gap needs in­quiry as to where the po­lice ser­vice, the of­fi­cers them­selves, in their eval­u­a­tion have such a rel­a­tive­ly low score."

Dr De­osaran said, to be 'very char­i­ta­ble', Grif­fith as an in­di­vid­ual, in his opin­ion, may have done well through his pas­sion.

He said the ques­tion was whether the com­mis­sion­er en­hanced the val­ues and com­pe­ten­cies and per­for­mance of the po­lice ser­vice as a whole.

"So, that’s a ques­tion mark the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion will have to eval­u­ate," Dr De­osaran said.

Commissioner Gary Griffith with police officers during a drug raid in Valsayn in November 2018.

Commissioner Gary Griffith with police officers during a drug raid in Valsayn in November 2018.

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Some of Grif­fith’s highs for 2019 in­clud­ed:

*Crack­ing sev­er­al hu­man traf­fick­ing rings

*Ar­rest­ing more than 900 peo­ple as part of Op­er­a­tion Strike­back

*Res­cu­ing 12 kid­nap vic­tims, with­out a ran­som be­ing paid

*Seiz­ing 858 il­le­gal guns, 10,928 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, and 333.2kg of co­caine

*Re­duc­ing the po­lice over­time bill by $70 mil­lion

*Clos­ing ‘Email­gate’, plant-like sub­stance gate, the Vin­cent Nel­son mat­ter, and the Cal­abar Foun­da­tion mat­ter

*Pro­mot­ing 313 po­lice of­fi­cers

*Sus­pend­ing 40 0ffi­cers for dis­ci­pli­nary is­sues

*Is­su­ing 1,892 Firearm User Li­cences

Some of his highs for 2020 were:

*The low­est mur­der toll since 2012.

*The largest re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crimes for 30 years

*34 of­fi­cers sus­pend­ed; 24 charged; 20 fired

*79.4 per cent de­crease in mat­ters dis­missed for com­plainant non-ap­pear­ance

*300 of­fi­cers pro­mot­ed–start­ing from the ranks of cor­po­ral to as­sis­tant com­mis­sion­er

*In­tro­duc­tion of pep­per spray and tasers for of­fi­cers

*Pro­vid­ed cus­tomer re­la­tions train­ing for of­fi­cers

Police Commissioner Gary Griffith stands over the body of Michael Thomas at the Arima Hospital.

Police Commissioner Gary Griffith stands over the body of Michael Thomas at the Arima Hospital.

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The lows

But there were, of course, the lows.

*Among high-pro­file clash­es with sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als and or­gan­i­sa­tions, the com­mis­sion­er went back and forth with the Law As­so­ci­a­tion over mul­ti­ple mat­ters. These in­clud­ed: his 'one shot, one kill' pol­i­cy, the deaths of the sus­pects in the An­drea Bharatt case, the Bail Amend­ment Bill, and the po­lice’s abil­i­ty to en­ter pri­vate prop­er­ty un­der the pub­lic health or­di­nance.

*He was al­so at log­ger­heads with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on the is­sue of the po­lice’s abil­i­ty to en­ter pri­vate prop­er­ty un­der the or­di­nance. In Sep­tem­ber 2020, the PM called on po­lice to en­force the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions equal­ly af­ter footage of a pri­vate pool par­ty at Bay­side Tow­ers, Co­corite, emerged.

In the weeks be­fore the Bay­side pool par­ty–in which no peo­ple were ar­rest­ed, po­lice cracked down on sev­er­al in­ci­dents of peo­ple par­ty­ing and sea bathing il­le­gal­ly–dur­ing COVID-19 lock­down–in­clud­ing a group of young peo­ple who went to bathe at a beach in Sea Lots.

"Per­sons who are par­ty­ing and spread­ing this virus must feel the full brunt of the law in Trinidad and To­ba­go. It’s not for me to tell the com­mis­sion­er who to ar­rest and how to ar­rest, but as Prime Min­is­ter, I could tell the com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice that the law must ap­ply to pro­tect us in Trinidad and To­ba­go from those who are not pre­pared to lis­ten," Dr Row­ley said at a press con­fer­ence.

How­ev­er, Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith lam­bast­ed the Prime Min­is­ter in re­sponse, say­ing the law did not al­low for po­lice to in­ter­vene at the pri­vate prop­er­ty un­less it was a paid event, which then legal­ly turns the space tem­porar­i­ly in­to pub­lic prop­er­ty.

"He needs to know his po­si­tion as chair of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, but he con­tin­ues to make com­ments about polic­ing and he doesn’t have that au­thor­i­ty or knowl­edge be­cause it’s the sec­ond time he has made the er­ror. First when he said the Com­mis­sion­er doesn’t have the au­thor­i­ty to go in­to su­per­mar­kets and banks to try to close them down...then, he came and he did a Michael Jack­son, moon­walked, and cor­rect­ed him­self, he’s do­ing the same thing again," Grif­fith said.

"He’s giv­ing the im­pres­sion to the coun­try that we are se­lec­tive, we are pro­fil­ing and we are not do­ing our jobs, but hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly, when we held the 27 per­sons just next door to Bay­side–when they broke the law–breached the reg­u­la­tions, swim­ming in a pub­lic place, tried to es­cape, hid­ing and we did not ar­rest them, he did not have a con­cern about it."

Grif­fith was sum­moned or in­vit­ed–de­pend­ing on who you ask–to a meet­ing with the Prime Min­is­ter. He lat­er apol­o­gised for how he re­spond­ed but main­tained he was cor­rect in his in­ter­pre­ta­tion.

*The com­mis­sion­er al­so had a run­ning grouse with a pop­u­lar me­dia house, as well as mem­bers of the pub­lic on so­cial me­dia. Seem­ing­ly for just about every crit­i­cism, he could find about him­self on so­cial me­dia, he re­spond­ed. Many on­line felt his en­er­gies would have been bet­ter spent on the job rather than re­spond­ing.

"He has en­sured that the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice is very present and vo­cal in the me­dia...There’s been great em­pha­sis on me­dia im­age...That’s his way. I just view it. It’s not a tra­di­tion­al way in Trinidad and To­ba­go, but he will tell you, he’s not a tra­di­tion­al CoP," Dr Figueira said.

Mean­while, Dr De­osaran sug­gest­ed that the com­mis­sion­er should have been more pro­fes­sion­al in in­stances when he was chal­lenged or con­struc­tive­ly crit­i­cised. Ac­cord­ing to the for­mer chair­man of the PSC, he was one of the many peo­ple at the re­ceiv­ing end of the com­mis­sion­er’s rants.

"The com­mis­sion­er must take a lev­el of dig­ni­ty and ap­pro­pri­ate­ness in deal­ing with the is­sues," he said.

"Yes, the me­dia needs the com­mis­sion­er to re­spond, al­ways. He has a po­si­tion and the me­dia would need re­spons­es, clar­i­fi­ca­tions and they do that, but to al­low the Com­mis­sion­er or any­body else to de­scend in­to per­son­al in­sults and so on when what is re­quired is a prop­er dis­cus­sion on the is­sues raised for the pub­lic in­ter­est...I think we have to be guard­ed against that."

Police Commissioner Gary Griffith with members of the SORT team after a sting operation where they seized millions of dollars in cocaine in Westmoorings.

Police Commissioner Gary Griffith with members of the SORT team after a sting operation where they seized millions of dollars in cocaine in Westmoorings.

The test

In his three years, Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith faced ac­cu­sa­tions from some quar­ters of be­ing prej­u­diced against peo­ple from im­pov­er­ished ar­eas. Grif­fith has ve­he­ment­ly de­nied the claims.

On June 27, 2020, came, ar­guably, the com­mis­sion­er’s biggest test when three men–Is­rael Clin­ton, Joel Ja­cobs, and Noel Di­a­mond–were al­leged­ly shot by po­lice in Mor­vant. When that footage of the shoot­ing went pub­lic, protests erupt­ed across Port-of-Spain. It ap­peared in the CCTV footage that the men were shot with their hands in the air. The of­fi­cers, at the scene, main­tained they were shot at first.

While there were claims of ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings against the po­lice ser­vice be­fore this in­ci­dent, this one sparked wide­spread out­rage–roads and the Beetham High­way were blocked, gun­shots were fired, while pro­test­ers marched through the cap­i­tal city. Then, dur­ing protests in Sea Lots, a preg­nant moth­er, Or­nel­la Greaves was killed.

Rel­a­tives claimed she was shot by an of­fi­cer, but po­lice de­nied the claim, say­ing there was no ev­i­dence to prove that the­o­ry.

The Mor­vant-killings protests last­ed for three days. In the end, more than 70 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed.

The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty called for the more than a dozen of­fi­cers in­volved to be sus­pend­ed, but the of­fi­cers were placed on ad­min­is­tra­tive du­ty/leave. The in­ci­dent con­tin­ues to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the PCA.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr De­osaran, the com­mis­sion­er seemed to be caught be­tween a rock and a hard place fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent. He said some sec­tions of the com­mu­ni­ty re­quired rigid, ro­bust law en­force­ment, mean­ing ap­pro­pri­ate use of force. How­ev­er, he said, if that is im­ple­ment­ed in cer­tain ar­eas, the oth­er side will claim that it is too bru­tal and that com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing is re­quired.

"So the ques­tion is what does a com­mis­sion­er do? I think what­ev­er he or she does, it has to be jus­ti­fi­able and what­ev­er con­tro­ver­sy erupts, as long as a com­mis­sion­er has a prop­er, vi­able, jus­ti­fi­able ba­sis, he or she has no wor­ry," he said.

"There were videos that showed young men with their hands raised who were al­leged­ly still shot. Now, that video is like the one with George Floyd in the Unit­ed States–which trig­gered the Black Life Mat­ters Move­ment. One video cre­ates more than a mil­lion sto­ries, and I think that dis­turbed the process and put the com­mis­sion­er in a cor­ner, he didn’t know what to do. You are ask­ing for strict law en­force­ment against peo­ple that are called mon­sters and cock­roach­es and so on, and when it is ap­plied, it is called too rigid."

The met­rics for se­lec­tion need to be more trans­par­ent

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Seep­er­sad, three years is too short of a pe­ri­od to judge a com­mis­sion­er’s per­for­mance. He said it takes a con­sid­er­able amount of time for some­one to un­der­stand the in­ner work­ings of the ser­vice, es­pe­cial­ly some­one like Grif­fith who came from out­side of the ser­vice.

The crim­i­nol­o­gist said more sys­tem­at­ic eval­u­a­tions of the po­lice com­mis­sion­er and the ser­vice need to be put in place to of­fer more trans­paren­cy to the process.

"There should be sys­tem­at­ic eval­u­a­tions car­ried on by two bod­ies: One is the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the oth­er is the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. All too of­ten what we see is that these types of bod­ies don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly col­lect sys­tem­at­ic in­for­ma­tion based on dif­fer­ent pre­de­fined mea­sure­ments. And so, don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly eval­u­ate the per­for­mance of a par­tic­u­lar per­son or en­ti­ty in a very sys­tem­at­ic way and that caus­es a prob­lem," he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Seep­er­sad, there are dif­fer­ent di­men­sions that one can use to eval­u­ate per­for­mance.

These in­clude crime fig­ures, man­age­ment ca­pac­i­ty, cost ef­fi­cien­cy, and dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ce­dures.

"The un­for­tu­nate thing is that these types of eval­u­a­tions if they are even done, are not nec­es­sar­i­ly made pub­lic. They are not pub­lic doc­u­ments, un­like in many oth­er coun­tries. If you look at the Unit­ed States and Eng­land and many oth­er coun­tries, es­pe­cial­ly the de­vel­oped ones, these types of eval­u­a­tions are made pub­lic," he said.

"It’s in the pub­lic do­main be­cause the of­fice of the com­mis­sion­er, as well as the po­lice ser­vice, is a pub­lic en­ti­ty. So, it helps with ac­count­abil­i­ty. It helps with trans­paren­cy."

The crim­i­nol­o­gist said eval­u­a­tions of the po­lice ser­vice do not typ­i­cal­ly hap­pen sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly in T&T.

"What hap­pens is that, some­times, they use the most ob­vi­ous da­ta avail­able which is crime da­ta. I say, un­for­tu­nate­ly, be­cause crime rates aren’t on­ly a mat­ter of the func­tion­ing of the of­fice of the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice or po­lice ser­vice. There are many, many fac­tors out­side of the con­trol of the po­lice ser­vice that could af­fect crime rates," Dr Seep­er­sad lament­ed.

In the ab­sence of sys­tem­at­ic da­ta, he said, it is prac­ti­cal­ly im­pos­si­ble for him to ac­cu­rate­ly re­view Grif­fith’s per­for­mance. He added that the last time a sys­tem­at­ic eval­u­a­tion was done was un­der for­mer chair­man Dr De­osaran.

Dr De­osaran agreed that the se­lec­tion met­rics for the com­mis­sion­er ought to be made more trans­par­ent by the ser­vice com­mis­sion.

"This is not to break any con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, but the pub­lic, giv­en the na­ture of the po­si­tion of com­mis­sion­er of po­lice and the im­pli­ca­tions and con­se­quences for the pub­lic’s in­ter­est...I think there should be more trans­paren­cy pro­vid­ed by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion," he said.

"I know there is some hes­i­tan­cy be­cause of the par­tic­u­lar ex­er­cise of mea­sur­ing a se­nior of­fi­cer but the greater in­ter­est would fall on the pub­lic in­ter­est side."

A com­mis­sion­er’s per­for­mance should be judged on four things that have plagued the po­lice ser­vice for many years, ac­cord­ing to Dr Figueira.

He called them the four horse­men of the po­lice apoc­a­lypse.

The first horse­man, he said, is pro­mo­tions.

"What we have now is this cu­ri­ous hy­brid–where you are pro­mot­ed on the plea­sure of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, and that doesn’t solve the prob­lem be­cause we need a sys­tem of pro­mo­tion that is based on mer­it and per­for­mance," he said.

"For us to have re­ten­tion in the po­lice ser­vice and for us to at­tract new tal­ent in the po­lice ser­vice con­tin­u­ous­ly, the pro­mo­tion has to be based on job per­for­mance. There have been pro­mo­tions un­der the present com­mis­sion­er, but we are still look­ing to­wards the es­tab­lish­ment."

Sec­ond­ly, ac­cord­ing to Dr Figueira, a com­mis­sion­er should be judged on how they han­dled in­ter­nal dis­ci­pline in the ser­vice. He said the dis­ci­pline struc­ture in the po­lice has col­lapsed and that the ser­vice’s dis­ci­pline tri­bunal must be brought back to life.

"There has been no at­tempt to breathe life in­to it. The on­ly talk we had for three years is to change the terms and con­di­tions of ser­vice to en­able the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to dis­miss peo­ple wher­ev­er they have been found short of the law, but that doesn’t solve the prob­lem be­cause, dur­ing the dai­ly op­er­a­tion of the po­lice ser­vice, we are go­ing to have is­sues of dis­ci­pline that arise that has to go through due process of law," he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Figueira, the third cri­te­ria is com­mand and con­trol. He said this re­mains a grave prob­lem.

"Re­mem­ber the pub­lic state­ment by the Prime Min­is­ter on $20 mil­lion for SU­Vs and how the mo­tor ve­hi­cles are con­sumed over two years and put out as derelict and new ones are bought again? That is a com­mand and con­trol is­sue," he said.

"So, the so­lu­tion of­fered to T&T to solve the prob­lem is to buy big­ger ve­hi­cles. What you all have to un­der­stand is that tech­nol­o­gy doesn’t solve prob­lems. So, to keep talk­ing about tech­nol­o­gy, tech­nol­o­gy doesn’t solve ba­sic op­er­a­tional prob­lems. It’s hu­man man­age­ment that has to solve prob­lems of man­age­ment."

The fourth and fi­nal cri­te­ria to judge a com­mis­sion­er, ac­cord­ing to Dr Figueira, is the man­age­ment of cor­rup­tion and or­gan­ised crime in the ser­vice.

He said every po­lice ser­vice in the world, be­cause of the pow­er it yields, has to deal with cor­rupt prac­tices.

"You have to con­stant­ly mon­i­tor that agency–both in­ter­nal­ly and ex­ter­nal­ly–to make sure you negate the ten­den­cy to­wards cor­rupt prac­tices. If you fail to do that, then you get or­gan­i­sa­tion­al crime de­vel­op­ing with­in the agency," Dr Figueira said.

"If you have a po­lice ser­vice in a trans-ship­ping re­gion for the il­lic­it drug trade, the bur­den be­comes even greater be­cause of the abil­i­ty of the transna­tion­al drug trade to cor­rupt with the wealth they com­mand. So, you have re­peat­ed in­stances, and that is large­ly the cry from the pub­lic in their in­ter­ac­tions with the po­lice ser­vice."

Ac­cord­ing to the crim­i­nol­o­gist, as­pects of the is­sues he list­ed have got­ten worse un­der Grif­fith’s tenure.

Nonethe­less, de­spite this be­lief, he be­lieved there could be a le­git­i­mate ar­gu­ment that Grif­fith de­serves an­oth­er term in of­fice.

"You have the ar­gu­ment in favour, stat­ing that when the present com­mis­sion­er came in, we were in the midst of a blood-let­ting spree. So, it was a hold­ing op­er­a­tion. To date, the blood-let­ting spree has abat­ed. So, now, you have the breath­ing space to com­mand the re­form process. You can make that ar­gu­ment," he said.

Dr De­osaran be­lieves the po­lice ser­vice has nev­er been as vis­i­ble or con­tro­ver­sial as it has been in the last three years.

"There are some good things and things that are not so good. That ex­pe­ri­ence, I think the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and the Gov­ern­ment should look back and see what was good to keep–the com­mis­sion­er’s pas­sion and his en­thu­si­asm–you would need some­body like that, who­ev­er it is," he said.

"I think along the way he has come face-to-face with some se­ri­ous chal­lenges and if you no­tice what the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion put out in its ad­ver­tise­ment, we will see the ex­tent of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties a po­lice com­mis­sion­er has. He has to be more de­tailed and I don’t think Gary Grif­fith is a man for de­tails. He’s more of a macro man­ag­er. He might be good, so what he needs, or who­ev­er comes in­to the of­fice for three years would need, is some strong back­up to sup­ple­ment the pas­sion of the com­mis­sion­er."

A hero to some, an ag­gra­va­tion to oth­ers–it is clear that Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith di­vides pub­lic opin­ion. But it would not be the pub­lic who ul­ti­mate­ly de­cides his fate. That de­ci­sion lies in the hands of the PSC.


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