12-year-old boy pleads guilty to threatening life of Trinidad police commissioner

(Trinidad Guardian) A 12-year-old boy has plead­ed guilty to is­su­ing death threats to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith.

The school­boy, who can­not be iden­ti­fied be­cause he is a mi­nor, plead­ed guilty to mis­us­ing a tele­phone to send a threat­en­ing mes­sage when he ap­peared be­fore Mas­ter Nazeera Ali in the Port-of-Spain Chil­dren’s Court Wednes­day af­ter­noon.

Ali did not im­me­di­ate­ly sen­tence him as she re­quest­ed a re­port from the Pro­ba­tion Ser­vices Di­vi­sion to as­sist in de­ter­min­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate pun­ish­ment.

Un­der Sec­tion 106 of the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act, the of­fence car­ries a max­i­mum penal­ty of a $200 fine or up to a month in prison.

How­ev­er, as the boy is a mi­nor with a clean crim­i­nal record and be­cause he plead­ed guilty at his first hear­ing, Ali could have pos­si­bly con­sid­ered a more le­nient sen­tence like com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice or a rep­ri­mand and dis­charge.

The boy, who was re­leased in­to his par­ent’s care un­til his sen­tenc­ing, is ex­pect­ed to reap­pear in court on Jan­u­ary 16.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, around 8.25 am on Sun­day, the E999 op­er­a­tor re­ceived a call from a bmo­bile num­ber where a male caller said: “We are com­ing to kill Gary Grif­fith.”

The call was then trans­ferred to the E999’s po­lice cor­po­ral on du­ty, where the caller re­peat­ed his threat to kill Grif­fith. The caller then ex­tend­ed his death to the po­lice cor­po­ral who took the call. The cor­po­ral im­me­di­ate­ly in­formed the rel­e­vant se­nior of­fi­cers.

A team of of­fi­cers from the Port-of-Spain CID, led by In­sp An­dre Lopez, lat­er traced the phone call to east Port-of-Spain and con­duct­ed raids lat­er that day.

Af­ter re­ceiv­ing ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion, the of­fi­cers went to an­oth­er apart­ment on Nel­son Street where they in­ter­viewed a woman who was said to be the reg­is­tered own­er of the phone which was used to make the threat­en­ing call.

On Tues­day af­ter­noon the boy sur­ren­dered to po­lice and he was charged.

Se­nior Supt Gary Ed­wards, ASP An­der­son Pa­ri­man, WPC Giselle Moses and Varun Go­sine were in­volved in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the threat made by the boy.

This in­ci­dent is sep­a­rate from the lat­est death threat made against Grif­fith and his wife Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith.

In a press re­lease, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) stat­ed that around 1.30 am the TTPS com­mand cen­tre re­ceived a call from a male caller whose num­ber was reg­is­tered. The man re­port­ed­ly said: “I want to sum­mon Gary Grif­fith for defama­tion of char­ac­ter against me to­mor­row in court, or else I will call him and chop off he (ex­ple­tive) moth­er (ex­ple­tive) head. How you like that? And kill he wife Nicole Dy­er… huh moth­er (ex­ple­tive).”