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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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.