Trinidad Top Cop starts shake-up of force

By Staff Editor On In Trinidad & Tobago News |
Gary Griffith
Gary Griffith

(Trinidad Guardian) The shake-up in the hi­er­ar­chy of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice has start­ed af­ter ACP Ir­win Hack­shaw was re­moved as ACP (Crime) and re­placed by ACP Jayson Forde.

The shake­up came a week af­ter Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith promised that he would place “the right hors­es on cours­es” in his quest to over­haul the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice to make it more ef­fi­cient.

Nei­ther Forde nor Hack­shaw was able to com­ment on their new po­si­tions when con­tact­ed yes­ter­day. Both of them ad­vis­ing this re­porter to con­tact them at a lat­er time.

Hack­shaw was one of six ACPs who was pro­mot­ed short­ly af­ter Grif­fith took of­fice. The oth­ers ACP Leroy Breb­nor, ACP Garfield Moore, ACP Vin­cel Ed­wards, ACP Ans­ley Gar­rick and ACP ­Har­rikr­ishen Baldeo and ACP Sharon Blake-Clarke.

Gary Griffith

Hack­shaw has been put in charge of the north-west di­vi­sions while ACP Bev­er­ly Lewis re­mains in charge of cen­tral, south and south-west op­er­a­tions.

Last week, Grif­fith said all po­lice of­fi­cers would be held ac­count­able.

“I am de­mand­ing a strong and vi­brant lead­er­ship by all who hold se­nior po­si­tions of au­thor­i­ty as they are all ca­pa­ble of do­ing. We would all be held ac­count­able with our per­for­mance mea­sures. There must be no weak link,” Grif­fith said.

Say­ing the crit­i­cal posts of ACP Op­er­a­tions and ACP Crime will be un­der con­tin­u­ous as­sess­ment, Grif­fith said those cho­sen would lead the charge in the di­rec­tion of the trans­for­ma­tion of the TTPS.

Promis­ing bet­ter ef­fec­tive­ness in op­er­a­tions for 2019, Grif­fith said those who “ can­not keep my pace would have to ei­ther lead, fol­low or get out.”

The re­moval of Hack­shaw came af­ter the TTPS came un­der scruti­ny when valu­able ev­i­dence un­cov­ered in a cy­ber crime crim­i­nal net­work went miss­ing un­der the noses of the po­lice.

How­ev­er, Grif­fith de­nied the shake­up in the TTPS’s hi­er­ar­chy had any­thing to do with the miss­ing ev­i­dence.

He not­ed that last year there was a shake­up at the Di­vi­sion­al Com­man­ders lev­el. He promised strate­gic re­as­sign­ments and the merg­ing of cer­tain units such as the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­tiga­tive Unit which will work with the Cy­ber­crime Unit, Fraud Squad, Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau and the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­tel­li­gence Unit.