Colonel Arthur Stephanos Mavrogordato had served in the British mandated Palestine as Commissioner of Police before coming to T&T to serve in a similar capacity. This position was then termed Inspector General of the Trinidad Constabulary/Commandant of Local Forces.His services in Palestine were probably the most productive that any police Commissioner ever achieved. Palestine had been, with British concurrence at the Balfour Declaration, air marked to be the Jewish homeland.The Palestinian Arabs did not concur, but Mavrogordato nevertheless managed to maintain a remarkable degree of calm, law and order in the region. This has since disappeared. The region has continually convulsed throughout the 30s, up to this present day.It has been taught within several learned circles in Trinidad, and with the advent of Internet, in the wider global community, that he, being Jewish, gave the Star of David to the local police force, army and cadet corps. In fact it has been a topic of conversation on many of our radio stations.Mavrogordato was selected for the highest police post in Palestine because he had the ability to be unbiased.
He was from the British colony, Cyprus, an island well frequented and many times inhabited by Jewish and Arab minorities.Arthur Stephanos Mavrogordato, his baptismal name, was from an ancient aristocratic Hellenic rooting that predates even the Greek mainland. He was Greek-Cypriot.Thoroughly committed to excellence in the policing workplace and an avid builder of the British Empire, Mavrogordato in all likelihood felt that it would be impossible to contest the Palestine politicking any longer.This demon was invading the Holy Land and so, he opted for a transfer to Trinidad.Here he was greeted by local officers wearing the same Star of David that they, as well as their predecessors had worn from well before the end of the nineteenth century. Hours after his appointment, he too wore the Davidic emblem, an emblem he had never before been privileged to wear.After successfully maintaining the peace throughout Trinidad's 1937 Butler episode, Commissioner AS Mavrogordato was promoted to the pre war rank of Brigadier General /Commandant of T&T Local Forces. Upon retirement he was replaced by WA Muller at the onset of the second world war.In 1948 the modern State of Israel was proclaimed and officially adopted their own ancient Israelite Star of David as the national emblem, two decades after the Brigadier had left the Holy Land, and more than a half century after the T&T's local forces made it their emblem.
