When Gary Grif­fith was ap­point­ed Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er on Au­gust 3, 2018, he took charge of an or­gan­i­sa­tion rid­dled with prob­lems, the most in­tractable of which has been the pres­ence of rogue of­fi­cers across the ranks.

That prob­lem was up­per­most last year when Laven­tille West MP Fitzger­ald Hinds, as chair­man of a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee ex­am­in­ing a re­port of the Po­lice Man­pow­er Au­dit Com­mit­tee, de­scribed the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) as “trou­bled” and “wound­ed.”

Events in re­cent days give cre­dence to that state­ment as the TTPS is em­broiled in con­tro­ver­sy over the seizure and re­turn of $22 mil­lion in cash in an op­er­a­tion spear­head­ed by its elite Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT).

Grif­fith, who led that ex­er­cise tar­get­ing a sus­pect­ed pyra­mid scheme in La Hor­quet­ta, Ari­ma, has launched a probe in­to the in­ci­dent. It has placed him and the TTPS in a very em­bar­rass­ing spot­light.

He has al­ready re­leased a lengthy state­ment hit­ting back at de­trac­tors who are ques­tion­ing his law en­force­ment abil­i­ties.

The in­ci­dent brings in­to sharp fo­cus Grif­fith’s on­go­ing bat­tle to weed out rogue el­e­ments from the po­lice ser­vice. Ear­li­er this year he ex­pressed con­cern that it is cost­ing tax­pay­ers an es­ti­mat­ed $50 mil­lion on 300 sus­pend­ed of­fi­cers who are still be­ing paid ei­ther half or 75 per cent of their salary.

This is a prob­lem Grif­fith has tried un­suc­cess­ful­ly to re­solve. Its cor­ro­sive ef­fect on the or­gan­i­sa­tion was not­ed in the TTPS Ser­vice Op­er­at­ing Plan 2018 which stat­ed that “mis­con­duct of a few po­lice of­fi­cers gen­er­al­ly un­der­mines and over­shad­ows these ef­forts, di­min­ish­es po­lice le­git­i­ma­cy and neg­a­tive­ly im­pacts pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence.”

There is now ze­ro-tol­er­ance of po­lice mis­con­duct and rogue of­fi­cers, once caught, are sub­ject to speedy com­ple­tion of tri­bunals and se­vere penal­ties. Whether that is bring­ing about a re­duc­tion in po­lice mis­con­duct re­mains to be seen. The La Hor­quet­ta in­ci­dent does not in­spire con­fi­dence that there had been any re­al progress.

Grif­fith has of­ten spo­ken against po­lice of­fi­cers who col­lude with crim­i­nals and has been work­ing to im­prove the sys­tem of in­ter­nal checks and bal­ances.

How­ev­er, those ef­forts must be sup­port­ed by ex­ter­nal sup­port sys­tem that en­sure of­fi­cers car­ry out du­ties prop­er­ly and are held re­spon­si­ble if they fail to do so.

Pub­lic con­fi­dence in the po­lice will be­gin to be re­stored when the qual­i­ty of po­lice ser­vice de­liv­ery im­proves and cor­rup­tion with­in the TTPS is wiped out.

This is not the sole re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Com­mis­sion­er.

In the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) there al­ready ex­ists frame­work for over­sight and ac­count­abil­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly of the se­nior ranks, which can help strength­en in­tegri­ty in polic­ing. There is al­so the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) in­de­pen­dent­ly in­ves­ti­gate com­plaints against po­lice of­fi­cers in­volved in crim­i­nal of­fences, cor­rup­tion and mis­con­duct.

The re­al­i­ty is that the TTPS has been in an un­healthy state for too many years for its hu­man re­source is­sues to be re­solved overnight. How­ev­er, fix­ing this prob­lem must be the top pri­or­i­ty.