The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT) has urged cau­tion over Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith’s “one shot, one kill” pol­i­cy.

In a press re­lease is­sued on Tues­day, LATT’s ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil com­mend­ed Grif­fith and sought to give him le­gal ad­vice on his pre­vi­ous han­dling of the con­tro­ver­sial is­sue.

While the LATT stat­ed that Grif­fith was cor­rect to as­sert that po­lice of­fi­cers can use dead­ly force in self-de­fence sit­u­a­tions, it said that should not be mis­con­strued in­to blan­ket au­tho­ri­sa­tion for a shoot to kill pol­i­cy.

It stat­ed that force used by po­lice of­fi­cers must be pro­por­tion­al to the threat they are fac­ing at the time.

“Shoot­ing to death some­one who points a gun at a po­lice of­fi­cer is eas­i­ly de­fen­si­ble; shoot­ing to kill in re­sponse to an at­tack with fists is more like­ly to be held to be ex­ces­sive and not sanc­tioned by law,” LATT’s sec­re­tary Ele­na Arau­jo said.

Arau­jo sug­gest­ed that Grif­fith’s pol­i­cy must pro­tect his of­fi­cers as well as cit­i­zens from “trig­ger-hap­py” of­fi­cers.

“The de­ci­sion whether dead­ly force is jus­ti­fi­able in any giv­en cir­cum­stance is like­ly to be made with lit­tle time to weigh the op­tions and con­se­quences of er­ror, ei­ther way, be­ing trag­ic,” she said.

Arau­jo made spe­cial note of Grif­fith’s “over­ly stri­dent” at­tacks of crit­ics of his pol­i­cy. Al­though Grif­fith has in­tense de­bates on the is­sue with Fix­in T&T’s Kirk Wait­he and crim­i­nal de­fence at­tor­ney Wayne Sturge through tra­di­tion­al and so­cial me­dia, nei­ther was di­rect­ly iden­ti­fied by name.

Re­fer­ring to a case where a man was killed by po­lice af­ter the of­fi­cers were at­tacked by a group of men throw­ing bot­tles, Arau­jo crit­i­cised Grif­fith’s re­sponse to con­cerns raised by a de­fence at­tor­ney.

“Yet still, in re­sponse to a crim­i­nal law at­tor­ney who is en­ti­tled to ques­tion the ap­pli­ca­tion of the “one shot, one kill” pol­i­cy in the cir­cum­stances as re­port­ed, the Com­mis­sion­er re­spond­ed rather dis­parag­ing­ly ac­cus­ing the at­tor­ney of hav­ing an agen­da and look­ing “af­ter the well-be­ing of those who pay him,” she said.

Arau­jo sug­gest­ed that Grif­fith should be sen­si­tive in fram­ing his pub­lic re­spons­es.

“There is the ad­di­tion­al dan­ger that the Com­mis­sion­er may be set­ting him­self up as be­ing un­ac­count­able to the pub­lic who must not deign to crit­i­cise his stew­ard­ship,” she said.

Re­spond­ing to the as­so­ci­a­tion short­ly af­ter it is­sued its re­lease, a de­fi­ant Grif­fith is­sued a four-page state­ment in which he stood his ground on the is­sue.

“As the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, I am not go­ing to con­cen­trate my ef­forts in any con­tin­u­ous de­bate with oth­ers who seem con­cerned that if some­one fires a shot at my of­fi­cers, they should not use dead­ly force.

“As I have stat­ed pre­vi­ous­ly, the mem­bers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) are well trained and equipped to un­der­take their role and func­tion, and if they were to step out of the law to do such, they are al­so aware of the con­se­quences,” he said.

Grif­fith al­so sug­gest­ed that pub­lic crit­i­cism of the pol­i­cy may af­fect his of­fi­cers’ abil­i­ty to ad­e­quate­ly re­spond to threats.

“The con­tin­u­ous state­ments by those with lit­tle law en­force­ment train­ing, lit­tle to no in­ter­ac­tion with the use of a firearm, may very well cause one of my of­fi­cers to have that one sec­ond hes­i­ta­tion when con­front­ed with hos­tile fire, hence I would con­tin­ue to ad­vise my of­fi­cers to ig­nore these in­di­vid­u­als and bod­ies and do what you are trained to do,” he said.

Like with oth­er crit­ics, Grif­fith then sought to knock the as­so­ci­a­tion’s de­ci­sion to crit­i­cise him for seem­ing­ly giv­ing of­fi­cers a blan­ket shoot to kill pol­i­cy. He de­nied that his pol­i­cy mim­ic­ked the one sug­gest­ed by the as­so­ci­a­tion.

“Whom­so­ev­er that may have pre­pared the re­lease for the Law As­so­ci­a­tion ap­pears ea­ger to want to ad­vance sce­nar­ios, rather than com­pre­hend the con­cept of the min­i­mum use of force pol­i­cy and the right for an of­fi­cer to use dead­ly force, as every po­lice of­fi­cer is aware of this pol­i­cy,” he said. He ques­tioned whether the re­lease was pub­lished with the ap­proval of its mem­ber­ship and why the as­so­ci­a­tion did not have stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tion be­fore pub­li­ca­tion.

“Why there­fore was there no re­quest in­stead to meet with the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to ex­press their views and con­cerns? How can a re­lease such as this, rec­ti­fy such is­sues ex­cept to un­der­mine the poli­cies of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the TTPS? How can this ac­tion re­solve their con­cerns?” Grif­fith asked.