“It is pa­thet­ic, it is im­ma­ture, and it shows to­tal ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.”

This was how for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Gary Grif­fith re­spond­ed to claims from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds and For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne that he was re­spon­si­ble for the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice los­ing fund­ing from in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.

In an in­ter­view mo­ments af­ter a me­dia con­fer­ence where Hinds and Browne made the al­le­ga­tion, Grif­fith said he was “to­tal­ly shocked” that both min­is­ters spent over an hour bash­ing him, with­out re­veal­ing a crime plan. He said he be­lieved their com­ments were po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

“As soon as I an­nounced that I was go­ing up for St Joseph, the pan­ic but­ton pressed. They are mor­ti­fied of the fact that they are now go­ing to lose St Joseph,” Grif­fith said.

As he de­fend­ed his per­for­mance as top cop, he al­so sought to de­fend the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) from at­tack.

He said SORT did not re­ceive fund­ing from the Unit­ed States and there­fore ques­tioned how it could be blamed for the TTPS los­ing fund­ing from the US Em­bassy. He added that po­lice-in­volved killings con­tin­ue with­out sim­i­lar scruti­ny or out­cry.

“Is he (Min­is­ter Browne) say­ing that the US de­cid­ed to hand­pick SORT to say that they are not go­ing to fund SORT? So, you shut down SORT, are you go­ing to shut down the prison ser­vice be­cause of the death of the pris­on­er re­cent­ly? Why you didn’t just shut down the Coast Guard be­cause of per­sons who died at the hands of Coast Guard of­fi­cers sev­er­al months ago? It is just the typ­i­cal PNM as­pect that if any­body es­tab­lished any­thing be­fore them, they must shut down and dis­man­tle.”

Grif­fith al­so in­sist­ed that there was no at­tempt to cov­er up any al­leged crimes by SORT of­fi­cers in­volved in the ap­pre­hen­sion of An­drew “So­lo” Mor­ris and Joel Bel­con, who were sus­pects in the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of An­drea Bharatt in Feb­ru­ary 2021.

“Yes, two per­sons died at the hands of the po­lice and nev­er in the his­to­ry of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), were so many po­lice of­fi­cers as­signed to in­ves­ti­gate that mat­ter, ap­proved by my­self, over 30 per­sons. So, there was nev­er ever in­ten­tion for cov­er-up. But for the con­cern of Fitzger­ald Hinds, please tell me how many po­lice of­fi­cers have been charged based on this mat­ter that is so ter­ri­ble.”

In Feb­ru­ary 2022, the US Em­bassy con­firmed to lo­cal me­dia that un­der its Leahy Law, Wash­ing­ton could not con­tin­ue to aid se­cu­ri­ty force units that were cred­i­bly im­pli­cat­ed in gross vi­o­la­tions of hu­man rights. The US gov­ern­ment con­sid­ers tor­ture, ex­tra­ju­di­cial killing, en­forced dis­ap­pear­ance and rape un­der colour of law as gross vi­o­la­tions of hu­man rights when en­forc­ing the Leahy Law.

De­spite this be­ing in the pub­lic do­main, Grif­fith dou­bled down on his pre­vi­ous com­ments that Mor­ris and Bel­con, who were re­port­ed to have fall­en off chairs while in po­lice cus­tody, lead­ing to their deaths, could no longer com­mit crim­i­nal of­fences.

“What I said is that these in­di­vid­u­als, based on all of these re­ports of charges on these in­di­vid­u­als and the death of An­drea Bharatt, there’s not a snow­ball’s chance in hell that they will ever be able to hurt any­one again. That is a fact. Un­less Fitzger­ald Hinds is so caught up in watch­ing this walk­ing dead se­ries that he be­lieves that they can, what I said was true.”

As for Hinds call­ing him a failed ex­per­i­ment, Grif­fith said he could sim­i­lar­ly rate the min­is­ter’s per­for­mance.

“Let me state what Fitzger­ald Hinds has done as min­is­ter ... noth­ing. Not one thing he has done. He has been seen and be­lieved as the biggest fail­ure as a min­is­ter in the his­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Boast­ing of his tenure as CoP, Grif­fith said he got rave re­views from the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, re­duced se­ri­ous crimes to the low­est in 31 years when he was na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter, and re­duced vi­o­lent crimes to the low­est it was in 17 years when he was top cop, while im­prov­ing pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence in the TTPS.