Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith on Tuesday called on the Ju­di­cia­ry to play its role in the fight against crime, as pub­lic pres­sure mounts on his charges to catch re­peat of­fend­ers and en­sure they re­main be­hind bars.

Grif­fith’s state­ment came hours af­ter the con­tro­ver­sial Bail (Amend­ment) Act be­came law, giv­ing po­lice part of the le­gal frame­work they need to lock away known firearm of­fend­ers for up to four months at a time.

He has pre­vi­ous­ly ar­gued that the leg­is­la­tion will be a crit­i­cal tool in the fight against crime, par­tic­u­lar­ly against firearm of­fend­ers.

Gang vi­o­lence has been blamed for the ma­jor­i­ty of the 320 mur­ders com­mit­ted this year and the killing of 24 peo­ple in one-week last month sparked a pub­lic out­cry for the po­lice, politi­cians and cit­i­zens to find an im­me­di­ate so­lu­tion.

And il­le­gal guns have been used in eight out of every ten mur­ders com­mit­ted so far this year and gang war­fare has been linked to a third of the 300-plus killings this year. Those are two ar­eas po­lice will be fo­cus­ing on.

But the top cop said the Po­lice Ser­vice can­not do it alone.

He not­ed that sen­tences im­posed by mag­is­trates for firearm of­fences were too le­nient. As an ex­am­ple, he ex­plained that a man who was con­vict­ed of be­ing in pos­ses­sion of an il­le­gal gun and am­mu­ni­tion was im­pris­oned for on­ly 18 months.

“This sen­tence ap­pears to be equat­ed to that of per­sons sen­tenced for pos­ses­sion of small quan­ti­ties of nar­cotics and fraud of­fences. One of the great­est atroc­i­ties in life is when one per­son has the in­tent to kill,” Grif­fith said.

He said while the coun­try was plagued by vi­o­lent crime, par­tic­u­lar­ly mur­der “and where the choice of weapon was an il­le­gal gun, the sen­tences im­posed against of­fend­ers were sim­ply not good enough.”

He not­ed that 83 per cent of this coun­try’s homi­cides were com­mit­ted with il­le­gal firearms and in the cur­rent sce­nario, a firearm of­fend­er can be out of prison in just over a year and back on the street.

Grif­fith said while not triv­i­al­is­ing of­fences such as drug pos­ses­sion or fraud, it was ap­par­ent that the scourge of vi­o­lent crimes was un­der­pinned by il­le­gal firearms and as such, the Ju­di­cia­ry has to play its role in re­flect­ing the in­ten­tions of Par­lia­ment and the con­cerns of all our law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.

He re­ferred to the two dead­ly mass shoot­ings in the Unit­ed States this week to sup­port his stance about the dan­gers of an il­le­gal gun.

“It shows how se­ri­ous of a crime it is and the se­ri­ous types of sen­tences which should be giv­en. Some­one hav­ing an il­le­gal firearm in their pos­ses­sion means they have an in­ten­tion and we should not have to wait to take de­ci­sive ac­tion,” he added.

Last month, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so crit­i­cised the mag­is­tra­cy for be­ing ig­no­rant to ram­pant crime af­fect­ing the coun­try.

“And if I can be crit­i­cal of the Ju­di­cia­ry be­cause they are al­ways crit­i­cal of us in the Ex­ec­u­tive, some­times you get the im­pres­sion that mem­bers of the ju­di­cia­ry don’t know what is go­ing on in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Be­cause peo­ple ap­pear be­fore them and all of a sud­den they be­come the bleed­ing heart for the crim­i­nals who will kill you with­out bat­ting an eye­lid,” Row­ley said on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form in Diego Mar­tin on Ju­ly 28.

The Prime Min­is­ter said then some­thing needs to be done now be­cause firearms are killing peo­ple in this coun­try like flies.

One so­lu­tion, ac­cord­ing to the Gov­ern­ment, was the pas­sage of the Bail Act and Par­lia­ment was con­vened dur­ing its va­ca­tion to de­bate the mat­ter. The pro­posed leg­is­la­tion was ap­proved on Ju­ly 31 and signed off by the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent on Au­gust 5.

The Bail (Amend­ment) Act has a sun­set clause of three years and must be ap­proved again by Par­lia­ment at the ex­pi­ra­tion if it proves to be ef­fec­tive.