Days af­ter his ap­point­ment as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP), Gary Grif­fith gave the as­sur­ance that he would pri­ori­tise treat­ing with the back­log of 13,000 ap­pli­ca­tions for Firearm User’s Li­cences (FUL). How­ev­er, yes­ter­day thou­sands of peo­ple who ap­plied be­fore 2015 were told they would have to re-ap­ply.

In a re­lease is­sued by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), Grif­fith con­firmed his of­fice had processed over 400 ap­pli­ca­tions so far and was work­ing to clear the back­log.

“My of­fice is ac­tive­ly work­ing to ad­dress pre­vi­ous chal­lenges with the FUL process and these is­sues, in­clud­ing the time it takes to eval­u­ate ap­pli­ca­tions, are be­ing over­hauled,” Grif­fith said.

Asked why he called for in­di­vid­u­als to re-ap­ply last evening, Grif­fith told the T&T Guardian that when an ap­pli­ca­tion was made, there were sev­er­al manda­to­ry re­quire­ments need­ed, some of which would have sure­ly changed over the years (re­fer­ring to the wait time).

“For ex­am­ple, an ap­pli­cant may have been sin­gle at the time when he ap­plied and is now mar­ried, so in a case like this the wife would need to ap­prove her hus­band get­ting a firearm,” Grif­fith said.

“An­oth­er fac­tor is the psy­cho­me­t­ric test­ing need­ed…if they had done it 14 years ago there would be need for a test again be­cause a lot would have changed in their lives, in­clud­ing a dif­fer­ence in their fi­nan­cial sta­tus or do­mes­tic. Al­so, ad­dress­es…if they have new ad­dress­es then the po­lice would need to do a new and dif­fer­ent search…for in­stance where they will be se­cur­ing the firearm, if they have a safe, if it’s a safe en­vi­ron­ment.”

Re­gard­ing cer­tifi­cates of char­ac­ter, Grif­fith said these would no longer be valid af­ter a cou­ple years.

“An up­dat­ed cer­tifi­cate of char­ac­ter would show if an act was com­mit­ted af­ter the last cer­tifi­cate was is­sued…so, bot­tom line, my in­ten­tion is to deal with all ap­pli­ca­tions but I need up­dat­ed in­for­ma­tion to work on as to whether or not I will ap­prove or re­ject,” Grif­fith said.

“I am do­ing this based on pro­fes­sion­al­ism and cour­tesy be­cause I will be re­spond­ing to each ap­pli­cant and telling them if they were ap­proved or re­ject­ed and if they want to con­test the re­jec­tion I am will­ing to go to the Court of Ap­peal to jus­ti­fy why I re­ject­ed the ap­pli­ca­tion.”

With the cur­rent pace, Grif­fith ex­pects that by the end of 2019 the back­log in ap­pli­ca­tions will be “no more.”

Grif­fith al­so again warned cit­i­zens against pay­ing bribes in the hope of se­cur­ing spe­cial favours for a FUL.

“I got in­for­ma­tion that peo­ple paid as much as $50,000, but as long as I am here, do not pay out any monies to any of­fi­cer who claims that they can guar­an­tee that files can move up or get ap­proved. There will be no favouritism in­volved in the eval­u­a­tion and pro­cess­ing of ap­pli­ca­tions,” Grif­fith said.

“I will ad­here and fol­low strict pro­ce­dures and process­es in grant­i­ng li­cences to per­sons who ap­ply, ac­cord­ing to the law and cri­te­ria met.”

How­ev­er, Grif­fith’s de­ci­sion did not go down too well with sev­er­al busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion head Reval Chat­ter­goon said while he un­der­stood Grif­fith’s per­spec­tive, rea­son and val­ue said the time­frame of three years should have been in­creased to five, mean­ing ap­pli­cants be­fore 2013 should be the ones to re-ap­ply.

“Maybe in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers should have been check­ing to re-con­firm al­ready sub­mit­ted doc­u­ments or have a com­mit­tee set up to car­ry out checks and up­date the al­ready re­ceived in­for­ma­tion, but I find it un­fair for ap­pli­cants to re-ap­ply from be­fore 2015,” Chat­ter­goon said.

Chat­ter­goon was ex­pect­ed to hold a board meet­ing last night to dis­cuss the is­sue and planned to pen a let­ter to Grif­fith to dis­cuss op­tions based on the feed­back of his mem­bers.

San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion PRO Abrahim Ali, mean­while, said he would have pre­ferred if ap­pli­cants who had ap­plied more than ten years ago and could show proof be giv­en first pref­er­ence of re­view by the CoP.

“They al­ready wait­ed so long and now have to go back and re-ap­ply, which is very un­fair be­cause when they re-ap­ply it will take more time again,” Ali said.

How­ev­er, Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Vish­nu Char­ran agreed with the time­frame.

“In a meet­ing we had with the Com­mis­sion­er, he did tell us that peo­ple’s per­son­al lives changed over the years and it was im­per­a­tive to have cur­rent in­for­ma­tion, so we are in agree­ment de­spite the fact that many would have ap­plied be­fore 2015.”

Per­sons who ap­plied for a FUL be­fore 2015 and are await­ing ap­proval were are asked to re­sub­mit the fol­low­ing doc­u­ments to the Of­fice of the CoP:

1. A Cer­tifi­cate of Good Char­ac­ter

2. Psy­cho­log­i­cal Eval­u­a­tion

3. Proof of Change of Ad­dress (where ap­plic­a­ble)

4. and Proof of Change in Mar­i­tal Sta­tus (where ap­plic­a­ble)

More in­fo:

Any com­pa­ny, busi­ness group or in­di­vid­ual 25 or over can ap­ply for a firearm user’s li­cence.

First, you must get a pro­vi­sion­al li­cence that au­tho­ris­es you to fire a gun at a spe­cif­ic shoot­ing range for train­ing pur­pos­es. Ap­pli­cants must get a cer­tifi­cate of char­ac­ter from the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice not less than three months be­fore the ap­pli­ca­tion date.

The pro­vi­sion­al li­cence ex­pires af­ter two months but ap­pli­cants can ap­ply for an­oth­er.

Pro­vi­sion­al li­cence hold­ers must train and take an ex­am for a cer­tifi­cate of com­pe­tence. They then go back to the CoP, who de­ter­mines whether to grant a full li­cence.

The per­mit states what types of gun the hold­er is per­mit­ted to ac­quire and how much am­mu­ni­tion they can pur­chase.