Derek Achong

Sus­pend­ed act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is sched­uled to at­tend a T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) me­dia brief­ing to­day in which he is ex­pect­ed to ad­dress the mat­ter con­cern­ing him and the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.

The brief­ing will take place at mid­day.

The an­nounce­ment came via a re­lease from the Po­lice Ser­vice which did not give Grif­fith or Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob po­lice des­ig­na­tions.

“In at­ten­dance will be Mr Gary Grif­fith and Mr Mc Don­ald Ja­cob,” the short re­lease stat­ed.

That re­lease was sent to the me­dia at 4.04 pm yes­ter­day but an ear­li­er re­lease sent by the Po­lice Ser­vice at 1.07 pm, re­ferred to Ja­cob as “Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice”.

The Po­lice Ser­vice did not state what tran­spired with­in those three hours that caused a change in Ja­cob’s des­ig­na­tion. There was al­so noth­ing to ex­plain in what ca­pac­i­ty Grif­fith would be ad­dress­ing a po­lice me­dia con­fer­ence to­day.

How­ev­er, the de­vel­op­ment comes fol­low­ing re­ports of Grif­fith’s le­gal team work­ing on a set­tle­ment agree­ment with the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion over his law­suit against it for act­ing im­prop­er­ly in sus­pend­ing him on Sep­tem­ber 17.

Grif­fith yes­ter­day con­firmed re­ports that his le­gal team was in­volved in talks to pos­si­bly re­solve the dis­pute with­out the need for fur­ther lit­i­ga­tion but said that he had no in­ten­tion of step­ping down once the sus­pen­sion is lift­ed.

“There is ob­vi­ous­ly di­a­logue be­tween at­tor­neys all the time,” Grif­fith said, as he de­clined to re­veal ad­di­tion­al de­tails.

He al­so post­ed a mes­sage on his Face­book page yes­ter­day about the on­go­ing is­sue.

“This is not about me. I nev­er want­ed nor will I ever want a job to the point that I am pre­pared to dam­age the coun­try of Trinidad and To­ba­go to get it,” Grif­fith said.

He al­so sought to ex­plain the ra­tio­nale for bring­ing the law­suit against the Com­mis­sion.

“What I stood up for was an un­fair sus­pen­sion at the hands of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion which cast a cloud of sus­pi­cion over me with­out even de­scrib­ing what the sus­pi­cion was about, or for that mat­ter, what the sus­pen­sion was about,” Grif­fith said.

“Not a shred of ev­i­dence has been pre­sent­ed to me and I have not been called up­on to an­swer or ex­plain any spe­cif­ic ac­cu­sa­tion. My fight is with the process and with the fact that the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s ac­tion was a di­rect at­tack on my in­tegri­ty,” Grif­fith said.

He al­so re­peat­ed his crit­i­cism of the Com­mis­sion for sus­pend­ing him based on an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the is­suance of firearm user’s li­cences (FULs) by for­mer Ap­pel­late Judge Stan­ley John, ini­ti­at­ed by it.

“Would any­one ap­pre­ci­ate be­ing ac­cused of a se­ri­ous is­sue based on hearsay and bac­cha­nal? Sure­ly this can­not be the way an in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tion does things,” Grif­fith said.

He not­ed that when he was giv­en his sus­pen­sion let­ter from the Com­mis­sion’s Chair­man Bliss Seep­er­sad, there was no ex­pla­na­tion.

“I have no fight with nei­ther the Gov­ern­ment nor any In­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tion in the coun­try. My po­si­tion is ac­tu­al­ly quite sim­ple. What is best for Trinidad and To­ba­go is what I sup­port,” Grif­fith said.

Grif­fith added that he chose to reap­ply for the post as he felt that he was eas­i­ly qual­i­fied and want­ed to con­tribute fur­ther to the coun­try.

“No one likes be­ing threat­ened every day or hav­ing to send their fam­i­ly abroad to pre­serve their safe­ty. Trust me when I say that this is not a life any­one would ‘fight’ to have (as­sum­ing they are do­ing it prop­er­ly),” Grif­fith said.

He stat­ed that if he is not even­tu­al­ly cho­sen at the end of the re­cruit­ment process for the next Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, he would con­tin­ue to con­tribute to the coun­try in an­oth­er way.

“The Po­lice Ser­vice, the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, the Par­lia­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and the Ju­di­cia­ry are just but some of the in­sti­tu­tions in this coun­try that are big­ger than Gary Grif­fith and that will out­last Gary Grif­fith,” he said.

“I have there­fore no de­sire to be part of any­thing that leads to the tar­nish­ing of these and oth­er na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions,” he added.

Grif­fith’s law­suit against the com­mis­sion and a sep­a­rate case, brought by so­cial ac­tivist Ravi Balo­gin Ma­haraj over Grif­fith’s act­ing ap­point­ment, is sched­uled to come up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Na­dia Kan­ga­loo on Mon­day.

In the law­suit, filed last Fri­day, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Ma­haraj are claim­ing that the Com­mis­sion and by ex­ten­sion, the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, act­ed un­con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly when they cer­ti­fied Grif­fith’s act­ing ap­point­ment with­out fol­low­ing the process used to ap­point a sub­stan­tive com­mis­sion­er.

Ac­cord­ing to Ma­haraj’s lawyers, Par­lia­men­tary ap­proval was re­quired when the com­mis­sion rec­om­mend­ed that Grif­fith be giv­en an act­ing ap­point­ment af­ter his term end­ed on Au­gust 17 as he was not a serv­ing po­lice of­fi­cer be­fore tak­ing up the ap­point­ment.

The Com­mis­sion is cur­rent­ly barred from com­plet­ing the re­cruit­ment process for the sub­stan­tive post by an in­junc­tion ob­tained by Se­nior Supt Anand Rame­sar, who is chal­leng­ing the Com­mis­sion’s de­ci­sion to not progress him to the in­ter­view stage.

Rame­sar’s law­suit comes up for hear­ing on Oc­to­ber 24, when High Court Judge Joan Charles would de­cide whether to lift it or ex­tend it pend­ing her de­ter­mi­na­tion of the case.