Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant 

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith has apol­o­gised to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley over the pub­lic spat he had with him over the Bay­side Tow­ers pool par­ty sev­er­al weeks ago.

Speak­ing at the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s week­ly me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said he felt his apol­o­gy was nec­es­sary.

“That is how I was trained, if it is I am wrong, I am wrong,”

Grif­fith said in ref­er­ence to the ap­par­ent feud he had with Row­ley af­ter the PM called on the po­lice to treat all cit­i­zens equal­ly re­gard­ing en­force­ment of the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions.

He said he has a very strong de­gree of pas­sion to serve his coun­try, its cit­i­zens and po­lice of­fi­cers but on this oc­ca­sion, his ap­proach may not have been ad­vis­able.

“Even though what I said was ac­cu­rate, it was no way ap­pro­pri­ate for me to make such com­ment which could al­lude to the com­ments made to the PM. Since then I have writ­ten to the PM of­fi­cial­ly and I have apol­o­gised and wish to take (this mo­ment) and let the pub­lic know that I do apol­o­gise for the com­ments that I would have made,” Grif­fith said.

“Some­thing peo­ple for­get is that GG is hu­man and he can make mis­takes. But it means that every sin­gle day I am be­ing mon­i­tored and scru­ti­nised and at times some­one can be frus­trat­ed and tired. Be­cause of my strong de­gree of pas­sion to help, it puts me in sit­u­a­tions to get me in trou­ble.”

The PM’s com­ment came af­ter po­lice failed to charge any­one for a health reg­u­la­tion breach af­ter show­ing up at Bay­side Tow­ers in Co­corite fol­low­ing com­plaints of a birth­day pool par­ty. But in re­sponse, Grif­fith chal­lenged the PM, say­ing the law did not al­low po­lice to charge peo­ple in their pri­vate res­i­dences and adding the PM did not raise sim­i­lar con­cern when a group of Sea Lots res­i­dents were al­so re­leased with­out charge for a sim­i­lar in­fringe­ment.

Ad­dress­ing this di­rect­ly, Grif­fith said, “When this start­ed in April and I made that press re­lease to state do not feel be­cause you were in pri­vate prop­er­ty we can­not do any­thing (clar­i­fy­ing once again on ar­rest and charge), even though what I said was re­quired … and even though it was the cor­rect thing, how you speak is even more im­por­tant be­cause even though the mes­sage was ac­cu­rate, it was lost be­cause of how I spoke and how I said it.

“Again, it was be­cause of my strong de­gree of pas­sion … that is no ex­cuse, it is to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able and I apol­o­gise to the coun­try for the com­ments I made. I was not asked to send any let­ter or apol­o­gy…but again I do apol­o­gise to the coun­try for my ac­tions and I do apol­o­gise to the PM.”

How­ev­er, he not­ed that the pub­lic al­so seemed to be sug­gest­ing the po­lice were giv­ing one sec­tor of the so­ci­ety pref­er­en­tial treat­ment, which was not true.

“On that oc­ca­sion, based on how the me­dia per­ceived what the PM said, as you would have seen on the front pages, it gave the im­pres­sion that the PM pull up Gary, that the TTPS is not do­ing their job and are pro­fil­ing per­sons and again for me to get in­to the con­ver­sa­tion, let me clar­i­fy once and for all…T&T is not a state of the US and many peo­ple feel so and when they see what hap­pens in the US they feel we are an arm of the US. So we have this sit­u­a­tion of po­lice vi­o­lence and abuse and on­ly tar­get­ing one group. I ac­tu­al­ly did a check of my 8,000 po­lice of­fi­cers and none of us are white,” he said.

“So first thing is let’s clar­i­fy this. No po­lice of­fi­cer goes out of their way to tar­get any par­tic­u­lar group and leave any oth­er group. We have noth­ing to gain by this.

“I my­self ac­tu­al­ly ar­rest­ed and charged a fam­i­ly mem­ber in West­moor­ings a few months ago, so no one is above the law…So if there is a per­cep­tion that the po­lice is on­ly tar­get­ing cer­tain per­sons, I took that hurt even though I know it is not true, but that is what the per­cep­tion the me­dia had based on what the PM stat­ed. Like­wise, there is the per­cep­tion that if you were par­ty­ing we could have ar­rest­ed you. Again, with my oath to of­fice, I have to make sure the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of the cit­i­zens are not in­fringed.”