I am more than dis­gust­ed with the bad ex­am­ple that Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is show­ing to the youth and chil­dren of this na­tion, and to his own ranks in the po­lice ser­vice with his bel­li­cose and ig­no­rant-sound­ing dai­ly at­tacks on any­one who dis­agrees with what he says or with what the po­lice ser­vice does.

One would ex­pect bet­ter be­hav­iour from a trained sol­dier who was in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment and who has had the ben­e­fit of dis­ci­plined mil­i­tary train­ing at the Sand­hurst mil­i­tary acad­e­my abroad.

From the way Grif­fith spoke pub­licly – and in deroga­to­ry terms – some time be­fore his ap­point­ment to the po­lice ser­vice about his for­mer De­fence Force com­mand­ing of­fi­cer, Ma­jor Gen­er­al Ed­mund Dil­lon (re­tired), I felt he would have been a prob­lem if ap­point­ed as the po­lice com­mis­sion­er.

I keep won­der­ing why this man’s be­hav­iour is al­lowed to con­tin­ue unchecked by a silent Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.

His most re­cent at­tacks against the Prime Min­is­ter and, be­fore that, on the head of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty, among oth­ers, show an ab­solute lack of re­spect for any one, whether high or low, who does not agree with him.

I be­lieve Grif­fith is tak­ing ad­van­tage of the pro­vi­sion re­gard­ing the run­ning of the Po­lice Ser­vice where­in it is stat­ed that the com­mis­sion­er has the sole au­thor­i­ty for the ad­min­is­tra­tion of that di­vi­sion of our forces, where he feels he can say what­ev­er he wants to whomev­er he wants and on one can do any­thing about it.

It is now time for the Prime Min­is­ter to ad­mit that he nev­er ex­pect­ed such be­hav­iour from Grif­fith, al­though I feel that Ma­jor Gen­er­al Dil­lon might have warned him of what to ex­pect from the fel­low. The Prime Min­is­ter must now ap­proach the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion with a view to re­mov­ing Grif­fith from of­fice be­cause we have had enough of his in­sults and his bad be­hav­iour.

For how long should the coun­try con­tin­ue to put up with this bad ex­am­ple from some­one who holds pub­lic of­fice? Shouldn’t this be a case of “mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice”?

A few months ago Dr Sheila Ram­per­sad stat­ed in a ra­dio com­men­tary that Gary Grif­fith is un­fit to hold the po­si­tion of com­mis­sion­er of po­lice. I could not agree more, since his be­hav­iour bears that opin­ion out and his an­tics are on par with those of U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, es­pe­cial­ly when one takes Trump’s ac­tions over the re­cent past in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.

Why does Grif­fith feel he has to chase every­thing that looks like a shad­ow, and in such a bel­liger­ent man­ner?

I hang my head in shame al­most every time I look at Trump on U.S. tele­vi­sion; and I do the same when Grif­fith is on the ‘at­tack’ here.

Clyde Alphon­so

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