Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith says a po­lice search of the ho­tel room of Ja­maican reg­gae artiste Bu­ju Ban­ton (re­al name Mark Myrie) may have been the last act for the Or­gan­ised Crime and In­tel­li­gence Unit (OCIU) of the po­lice ser­vice.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Grif­fith an­nounced a ma­jor over­haul of the unit in the wake of the in­ci­dent, say­ing while he had been con­tem­plat­ing it be­fore the em­bar­rass­ment of the Ban­ton raid made it an ab­solute ne­ces­si­ty now.

He said the de­ci­sion by the OCIU to search Ban­ton’s ho­tel room on Sat­ur­day could have start­ed an in­ter-is­land feud.

“This sit­u­a­tion that took place re­cent­ly with the search war­rant with Bu­ju Ban­ton, I think again, based on in­tel­li­gence, what you need to do is make sure there is prop­er sur­veil­lance. Some­one ob­vi­ous­ly dropped the ball. It could have caused a ma­jor rift be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Ja­maica,” Grif­fith said.

“Strange enough, that is not the fo­cus of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, but I saw it fit to meet Mr Bu­ju Ban­ton per­son­al­ly to look at the sit­u­a­tion, and I think the sit­u­a­tion was re­solved.”

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young al­so is­sued a state­ment on the search war­rant yes­ter­day, say­ing, “I have not­ed that the Com­mis­sion­er gave as­sur­ances (as ev­i­denced by a press re­lease last night) that the po­lice ser­vice will do all that it can to en­sure that the re­main­der of Bu­ju’s vis­it is peace­ful and in­ci­dent free. I wel­come this as­sur­ance by the Com­mis­sion­er and the men and women of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.”

Grif­fith did not go in­to de­tails about the im­pend­ing OCIU changes but promised to re­veal all at a press con­fer­ence on Wednes­day. His state­ments came hours af­ter Ban­ton’s room at the Hilton Trinidad was searched by sev­er­al po­lice of­fi­cers on Sat­ur­day night. Short­ly af­ter the search, which turned up noth­ing il­le­gal, Grif­fith met with Myrie and apol­o­gised for the search. Grif­fith al­so sent out a press re­lease af­ter the meet­ing with Ban­ton, in which he ac­cept­ed the “em­bar­rass­ment, anx­i­ety and in­con­ve­nience” the search had caused to Ban­ton and his team.

Yes­ter­day, Grif­fith, con­firm­ing he was prob­ing the OCIU’s con­duct in the in­ci­dent, told GML he had still not yet de­ter­mined whether the in­tel­li­gence that the war­rant was based on was ac­cu­rate.

“It’s al­most com­plet­ed but I am not go­ing to re­veal the de­tails yet, by Tues­day or Wednes­day I am go­ing to be hold­ing a press con­fer­ence to an­nounce the de­tails be­cause it is not just this in­ci­dent,” Grif­fith said.

How­ev­er, he said he had come to the re­al­i­sa­tion that there have been “sev­er­al” is­sues with­in the OCIU.

“I re­alised there have been sev­er­al ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties and ball-drop­ping by in­tel­li­gence agen­cies in the po­lice ser­vice and this here could very well be the last straw. I will be do­ing a press con­fer­ence on Wednes­day for a ma­jor over­haul in the in­tel­li­gence de­part­ment in the po­lice ser­vice.”

He de­clined to say how many of­fi­cers would be af­fect­ed by the changes but he said no ac­tion would be tak­en against any of­fi­cer in­volved in the Ban­ton search be­fore the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­plet­ed.

“I wouldn’t take any ac­tion un­til I com­plete the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to all the mat­ters—it is not just Bu­ju Ban­ton, there have been sev­er­al ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties I have seen based off the ac­tions of the de­part­ment in the OCIU and I have no in­ten­tion for us to con­tin­ue to drop the ball. The TTPS needs to be in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven in all op­er­a­tions and that needs to be the cat­a­lyst for suc­cess­ful op­er­a­tions.”

He said the OCIU was al­so sup­posed to be re­spon­si­ble for prepar­ing ev­i­dence “pack­ages” for court mat­ters and that had not been hap­pen­ing.

“The OCIU is al­so sup­posed to be very in­stru­men­tal in dri­ving home the pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al arm-so when we have all the nec­es­sary ev­i­dence and it must be pack­aged prop­er­ly so that when we go to court that like­wise that we do not have any loop­holes that some­one can take ad­van­tage of loop­holes that we may have caused and that has not al­so tak­en place. And I am go­ing to put an end to this.”

The search caused quite a stir on so­cial me­dia and Ban­ton’s In­sta­gram video about it had been viewed over 300,000 times up to just af­ter noon yes­ter­day.

A Ja­maican-based web­site called 18 Karat Reg­gae al­so pub­lished an ar­ti­cle yes­ter­day in which they claim to have in­ter­viewed Trinidad-born rap­per Nic­ki Mi­naj.

In the ar­ti­cle, 18 Karat claims Mi­naj said: “They had no good rea­son to search the man’s room ex­cept that he is a Ras­ta and to­day is 420. What they did is dis­gust­ing.”

The site al­so claims Mi­naj told them she was em­bar­rassed to be a Trinida­di­an be­cause of the in­ci­dent and quot­ed her as say­ing: “For a man like Bu­ju Ban­ton who was vic­timised by the Amer­i­can jus­tice sys­tem to be treat­ed like this by our own peo­ple is just em­bar­rass­ing.”

At­tempts to get a re­sponse from Mi­naj on Twit­ter were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day.