Trinidad Top Cop vows tougher stance against criminals

(Trinidad Guardian) “It af­fects me every sin­gle time there is a homi­cide in this coun­try, so I have been af­fect­ed 500-plus times this year. It hurts me.”

With this pain and ded­i­ca­tion to du­ty Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said in the com­ing year he plans to take a heavy-hand­ed ap­proach to treat with crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“I am go­ing af­ter these in­di­vid­u­als one by one, and again I give the as­sur­ance it will be done with­in the law, but I am not go­ing to sit idly by and have po­lice of­fi­cers shot at, see­ing young men be­ing killed and these in­di­vid­u­als feel they could walk with a firearm and do what they want and af­fect the lives of the vast ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens,” he de­clared yes­ter­day.

“So to mem­bers of the me­dia, to all the ac­tivist groups, to all the de­fence crim­i­nal at­tor­neys who may be con­cerned, 2020 I am go­ing to have a 2020 vi­sion. We are go­ing to lock and load with safe­ty catch­es off.”

Grif­fith spoke with Guardian Me­dia a day af­ter he and mem­bers of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) con­duct­ed an ex­er­cise which re­sult­ed in the killing of a man, Michael Thomas, sus­pect­ed to have mur­dered PC Nicholas Vic­tor on Christ­mas Eve. Mo­ments af­ter the killing an im­age of Grif­fith stand­ing over Thomas’ dead body be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia.

The top cop said he met with the man’s moth­er and she apol­o­gized

“It hurt my heart be­cause a moth­er lost her son re­gard­less of what he was,” he said.

Notwith­stand­ing this, a tough-talk­ing Grif­fith as­sured he will be on the ground more in 2020 and there will be high­er vis­i­bil­i­ty of of­fi­cers.

He said: “So yes you are go­ing to see more blue lights, you are go­ing to hear more sirens, you are go­ing to see more pa­trols, you go­ing to have more road­blocks. We are go­ing to be up close and per­son­al, up in your face, be­cause that is the on­ly way we could pro­vide a de­ter­rent.”

In ac­count­ing for the past year the Com­mis­sion­er ad­mit­ted there was a spike in crime, par­tic­u­lar­ly homi­cides, in the sec­ond half of 2019. He said this could be due to the work be­ing done by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

“At times we need to bleed to heal. Like­wise, be­cause of the things that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice has done this year when we’ve been crack­ing down heav­i­ly on drug blocks, go­ing af­ter white-col­lar crime, try­ing to put a block to il­le­gal weapons en­ter­ing the coun­try, try­ing to pre­vent gangs from hav­ing state con­tracts—all of these things can cause an in­crease in crime,” Grif­fith ex­plained.

An­oth­er fac­tor he said is the pro­lif­er­a­tion of as­sault ri­fles in the hands of crim­i­nals. Ac­cord­ing to Grif­fith, there is a great pos­si­bil­i­ty that half of the homi­cides that took place this year were com­mit­ted by crim­i­nals who were held with weapons but were let go.

The Com­mis­sion­er crit­i­cised the short­com­ings in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, say­ing: “This is not a ba­nana re­pub­lic where per­sons can be held with firearms and we have politi­cians and we have per­sons who are at­tor­neys that are sen­a­tors who have the au­dac­i­ty to say that this per­son has a right to come back out, that is what has led to the death of a po­lice of­fi­cer.”

He said to move for­ward all the stake­hold­ers must buy in­to the plans and poli­cies of the po­lice ser­vice. If the po­lice are al­lowed to do their jobs and there aren’t any “get out of jail free cards,” there will be a re­duc­tion in crime.

“There comes a time this coun­try needs to have per­sons stand firm and fight for our coun­try. Peo­ple don’t want that. We can­not sing kum­baya and try to hope that crime will go away. We need to fight fire with fire. I in­tend to do this.

Grif­fith said he spent a large por­tion of the oast year re­struc­tur­ing and re­con­fig­ur­ing the TTPS.

“I can as­sure you that this is a more ef­fec­tive, more ef­fi­cient, more ac­count­able Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice,” he said.

He added sev­er­al rogue of­fi­cers have been ar­rest­ed and dis­ci­plined.

With the po­lice step­ping up the fight against crim­i­nals, the Com­mis­sion­er warned young per­sons to stay away from lives of crime, be­cause “who don’t want to hear will feel.”