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Saturday, March 15, 2025

'No sympathy" for criminals—Griffith

by

Renuka Singh
2330 days ago
20181028
Police officers pass debris on Upper Wharton Street, Laventille where residents block the road after five men were shot by police on Thursday night.

Police officers pass debris on Upper Wharton Street, Laventille where residents block the road after five men were shot by police on Thursday night.

Nichole Drayton

Renu­ka Singh

Tough-talk­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith has no sym­pa­thy for any­one de­fend­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Grif­fith took a stern line af­ter Thurs­day night's shoot-out in Trou Macaque, Laven­tille, left five men, in­clud­ing two teenagers, dead. One po­lice of­fi­cer was grazed by a bul­let and had to re­ceive treat­ment for burns on his up­per arm.

"Peo­ple need to stop be­ing sym­pa­thet­ic with the crim­i­nals," Grif­fith said in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

"My job is to hunt down and ar­rest crim­i­nals."

On Thurs­day just af­ter 9 pm, po­lice re­ports in­di­cat­ed, there was a shoot-out with five men and the men were killed.

How­ev­er, a me­dia re­port said that eye­wit­ness­es had con­flict­ing ac­counts of what oc­curred. One woman, a grand­moth­er of one of the boys, said his hands were up when he was killed.

"The pub­lic should ask if these so-called wit­ness­es were in the room and saw the fire­fight to know what hap­pened...or that the men had their hands in the air. The an­swer is no.

"How many times do we hear af­ter a sus­pect is held or shot that he was a 'good boy' or they knew he didn't do any­thing?" he asked.

Grif­fith said he found it in­ter­est­ing that some peo­ple are say­ing the men were shot by po­lice in an ex­tra­ju­di­cial killing when they were play­ing cards.

"Yet, a bul­let ripped through the jack­et of a po­lice of­fi­cer, miss­ing his chest by inch­es," he said.

"That jack of spades have a sharp edge."

Grif­fith said if the men were in­deed play­ing cards, why was one po­lice of­fi­cer treat­ed for burns af­ter be­ing grazed by a bul­let.

"So it was an imag­i­nary man in the room that did this?" he asked.

He said that there were very few peo­ple who were sym­pa­this­ing with the crim­i­nal el­e­ment and con­demn­ing the po­lice for their ac­tions.

"I ask how would they have felt if the bul­let went one inch to the left and killed the of­fi­cer?"

CoP crit­i­cised

Grif­fith was crit­i­cised on so­cial me­dia by for­mer jus­tice min­is­ter Christlyn Moore and for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) sen­a­tor at­tor­ney Wayne Sturge.

Sturge open­ly crit­cised Grif­fith's strong de­fence of the po­lice af­ter the shoot-out.

"Be­cause of high crim­i­nal­i­ty most cit­i­zens are un­con­cerned when the po­lice in this coun­try en­gage in ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings, that is un­til they are di­rect­ly af­fect­ed," Sturge said.

"Most peo­ple are pre­pared to go with the ver­sion giv­en by the po­lice be­cause the vic­tims are 'good boys'. The re­al­i­ty though is that while many of the ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings can be jus­ti­fied, there ex­ists a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of such killings that can­not be jus­ti­fied.

"My point is this, the mu­nic­i­pal courts ex­ist for a rea­son, re­gard­less of why we think the way we think about peo­ple we de­scribe as 'good boys'. A civilised coun­try which has re­spect for the rule of law and the sacro­sanct na­ture of hu­man life will de­mand bet­ter," Sturge said.

Sturge said a Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er who de­scribed young black men from the ghet­to as "cock­roach­es" should be a cause for grave con­cern.

Sturge re­called the fate of for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Ran­dolph Bur­roughs, who was al­so pop­u­lar for his strong stance against crime.

"Ran­dolph Bur­roughs' wan­na-be po­lice of­fi­cers must know that in a coun­try where there are still de­cent folk, there will be a day of reck­on­ing, as had hap­pened with the events which oc­curred in Moru­ga. Ran­dolph Bur­roughs nev­er re­cov­ered from his crim­i­nal charges, and lucky for him the charges weren’t mur­der, a word to the wise is suf­fi­cient," Sturge said.

"The penal­ty for most of the crimes these shoot­ing vic­tims are sus­pect­ed of, even where they are found guilty, is not death, and an ex­tra­ju­di­cial killing that can­not be jus­ti­fied is not mere­ly a sen­tence of death for one of Gary's cock­roach­es, it is state-spon­sored mur­der done with the ac­qui­es­cence of the tax­pay­ers," Sturge said.

Moore al­so took to so­cial me­dia to ques­tion the killings by the po­lice. She post­ed the com­ments from Grif­fith that the po­lice will "out­gun" the crim­i­nals and de­scribed the rhetoric as "dan­ger­ous".

"Do I need to say that this rhetoric is dan­ger­ous, reck­less, un­sci­en­tif­ic and will get in­no­cent peo­ple killed? In­no­cent po­lice of­fi­cers and civil­ians? Where will you be when the out­gun war starts?" she asked.

But Grif­fith dis­missed both of them.

"Moore and Sturge have their jobs to do and I have mine," he said.

"Many are aware of the job of Wayne Sturge. If he is against my ac­tions, I am so shocked," Grif­fith said sar­cas­ti­cal­ly.

"It seems that too many peo­ple try­ing to be­come judge and ju­ry. A po­lice of­fi­cer was in­jured and no­body is talk­ing about how the of­fi­cers could have lost their lives in the line of du­ty,' he said.

'Ar­moured ve­hi­cles for cops'

Grif­fith is al­so seek­ing to res­ur­rect a part of his crime plan hatched dur­ing his tenure as min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

"Ar­moured ve­hi­cles will help with the fight against crime," he said.

Grif­fith said the plan to buy the ve­hi­cles was shelved when he demit­ted of­fice.

He said that the ar­moured vans were ex­pect­ed to help pro­tect of­fi­cers while do­ing their jobs. He said peo­ple who crit­i­cised the move were "be­ing im­ma­ture".

"Every sin­gle coun­try has it. Trinidad had it about 30 years ago. Do they want the po­lice to be vul­ner­a­ble?" Grif­fith asked.


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