Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith says the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) cow­ered to pub­lic pres­sure by is­su­ing a re­lease which called for the sus­pen­sion of the po­lice of­fi­cers in­volved in the shoot­ing deaths of Mor­vant res­i­dents Joel Ja­cobs, Is­rael Clin­ton and Noel Di­a­mond last month.

How­ev­er, he is al­so set to or­der 1,000 body cam­eras so that his of­fi­cers can record their ac­tiv­i­ty so they can de­fend them­selves against false al­le­ga­tions when they arise in the course of their du­ties.

On Mon­day, the PCA said in a re­lease that based on its find­ings, the of­fi­cers should be sus­pend­ed. How­ev­er, Grif­fith said the find­ings should have been sent to the TTPS be­fore such a pub­lic state­ment. (See ed­i­to­r­i­al on page 12)

“My con­cern is that you do not send some­thing to the me­dia to es­ca­late sen­sa­tion­al­ism be­fore it gets to my desk. And then when you do it out of com­mon cour­tesy to ex­plain the find­ings and don’t just give a rec­om­men­da­tion to the po­lice,” said Grif­fith.

“To me, it can be per­ceived as a get out of jail free, I pass the buck I hand it over to you so no one could blame me.”

Grif­fith, how­ev­er, con­firmed that he had tak­en the of­fi­cers who had fired their weapons dur­ing the ex­change off both op­er­a­tional and ad­min­is­tra­tive du­ty. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that sev­en of­fi­cers are be­ing probed in the in­ci­dent.

“Based on the find­ings now of the PCA, what I have done is to en­sure that all of the po­lice of­fi­cers who are in­volved in fir­ing their weapon at that point, they would not be on ad­min­is­tra­tive or op­er­a­tional du­ty with im­me­di­ate ef­fect,” he said.

“It does not mean that they are la­belled as be­ing on sus­pen­sion or they’re cul­pa­ble for or we see them as be­ing a sus­pect. That would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate. When the find­ings from the PCA come to me, then we will know if we take fur­ther de­ci­sive ac­tion or the of­fi­cers will re­turn to full du­ty.”

Grif­fith said a sus­pen­sion could on­ly be ful­ly war­rant­ed if it was clear the of­fi­cers were in the wrong.

He al­so con­firmed 1,000 body cam­eras have been or­dered for his of­fi­cers.

“The rea­son I want to push for body cam­eras more than any­one is for when my po­lice of­fi­cers are wrong­ful­ly ac­cused, you know by the la­dy in the tow­el who makes the ac­cu­sa­tion be­cause we do know they have bion­ic eyes that see through walls and around cor­ners,” he said.

“Po­lice can now use this as ev­i­dence to pro­tect them­selves when wrong­ful­ly ac­cused.”

Grif­fith con­firmed that Task Force of­fi­cers will be re­quired to wear the body cam­eras in the fu­ture.

“These body cam­eras will be is­sued to all po­lice of­fi­cers in the Task Force, es­pe­cial­ly in the five ma­jor di­vi­sions, as soon as we ac­quire it. Port-of-Spain, West­ern, North­ern, North East­ern and Cen­tral. And the body cam­eras will be manda­to­ry and placed in reg­u­la­tions to en­sure that any of­fi­cer that comes out on a pa­trol, he must im­me­di­ate­ly switch it on. So that any of­fi­cer comes out in pa­trol it must be put on,” he said.

Just a cou­ple weeks ago, Grif­fith con­firmed that there were 180 body cam­eras in op­er­a­tion in the TTPS which were main­ly used by of­fi­cers on foot pa­trol. How­ev­er, as he did back then, yes­ter­day he stressed the body cam­eras were lim­it­ed in their re­li­a­bil­i­ty dur­ing a gun­fight.

“It is not some­thing like some­one on the range and see­ing every­thing. But as we stat­ed a few weeks ago, it can as­sist with au­dio. So it won’t hurt,” he said.