Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith says there is con­fir­ma­tion that po­lice of­fi­cers are in­volved in the smug­gling of il­le­gal drugs, weapons and sex work­ers in­to T&T. 

It was one of the rea­sons Grif­fith plans to con­tin­ue with poly­graph and drug tests for po­lice of­fi­cers as he promised to wipe out T&T’s il­le­gal sex in­dus­try.

With of­fi­cers of the South West­ern Di­vi­sion ex­pect­ed to un­der­go tests this week, he said those who are share­hold­ers and ac­com­plices will be ex­posed.

Last week, new­ly-elect­ed pres­i­dent of the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion In­spec­tor Gideon Dick­son said that no tests should be done un­til his or­gan­i­sa­tion meets with Grif­fith. Dick­son said of­fi­cers have con­cerns.

He said that Grif­fith must re­veal un­der what au­thor­i­ty he is op­er­at­ing as it re­lates to the new pol­i­cy. For­mer As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Michael Seales had sup­port­ed the move.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew, Grif­fith said that try­ing to get the of­fi­cers at po­lice sta­tions to shut down broth­els and hide­outs were fu­tile as many times the op­er­a­tors were tipped off about im­pend­ing raids.

“It is not a way to pro­file, tar­get or witch hunt any po­lice of­fi­cer, but the poly­graph test­ing and the drug test­ing will com­mence this week. The first per­son that will be poly­graphed and drug test­ed would be the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice so that no one can ques­tion us tar­get­ing any­one. I will ex­pect that all po­lice of­fi­cers will not have an is­sue with this be­cause this is ex­act­ly what you did to get in­to the Po­lice Ser­vice.

“By do­ing this, we will be able to ex­tract the sheep from the goat. Per­sons who fail or are re­luc­tant to do so, they will be re­as­signed. I in­tend to clean out that south­west­ern penin­su­la to en­sure that any po­lice of­fi­cer who is in­volved in aid­ing or abet­ting in il­le­gal hu­man traf­fick­ing, il­le­gal drugs or weapons en­ter­ing the coun­try, they must not in any way have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to do so based on where they are lo­cat­ed,” Grif­fith said.

He con­firmed that of­fi­cers have been as­sist­ing the il­le­gal en­try of ves­sels along the south­west­ern penin­su­la, where marked po­lice ve­hi­cles are used to car­ry out light sig­nals to alert the ves­sels.

Aware that it may bring con­dem­na­tion, Grif­fith said the pub­lic should not lose con­fi­dence in the Po­lice Ser­vice but see that trans­paren­cy is in­creas­ing and po­lice of­fi­cers are hav­ing to ac­count for their ac­tions.

It was one of the rea­sons for the es­tab­lish­ment of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT). The of­fi­cers of that unit have un­der­gone poly­graph tests and trained in res­cue and erad­i­ca­tion op­er­a­tions. 
 He said that po­lice were play­ing a ma­jor part in bor­der pro­tec­tion and will soon es­tab­lish a coastal pa­trol unit.