Of­fi­cials with­in the TTPS have un­cov­ered an al­leged plot to kill Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, Supt Roger Alexan­der and mem­bers of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT).

Ac­cord­ing to in­tel­li­gence, the as­sas­sins are al­leged­ly for­mer mem­bers of the Venezue­lan mil­i­tary (Na­tion­al army of the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela).

The in­for­ma­tion which was con­tained in a con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ment—ti­tled Alert, Plot To Kill TTPS Of­fi­cers—was for­ward­ed to se­nior se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials with the rec­om­men­da­tion that "A du­ty of care should be per­formed on the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith, Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice Roger Alexan­der and se­nior and ju­nior po­lice of­fi­cers at­tached to the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT)."

The plot, the in­tel­li­gence re­vealed, was hatched by gang mem­bers tar­get­ing of­fi­cers "for re­tal­ia­to­ry vi­o­lence." It was re­vealed that lead­ers of crim­i­nal gangs in T&T have al­leged­ly con­tract­ed Venezue­lan hit­men to as­sas­si­nate the of­fi­cers.

The doc­u­ment read, "It is un­known when and where the planned ex­e­cu­tions would take place how­ev­er, their modus operan­di in­cludes the use of overt sur­veil­lance on their in­tend­ed tar­gets, most like­ly util­is­ing mo­tor­cy­cles."

The in­tel­li­gence re­vealed sur­veil­lance was per­formed on "Su­per­in­ten­dent Alexan­der dur­ing his dai­ly rou­tine in the Croisee, San Juan, area re­cent­ly."

SORT in­tel­li­gence an­a­lysts ad­vised that the in­tend­ed tar­gets should be in­formed of this pend­ing threat against their lives. They fur­ther ad­vised that the CoP, the su­per­in­ten­dent and SORT of­fi­cers, "along with their fam­i­lies ex­er­cise ex­treme sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness when car­ry­ing out their day-to-day ac­tiv­i­ties."

They al­so not­ed that "threats like these should not be tak­en light­ly."

They claimed this lat­est in­tel­li­gence "sig­nalled a fright­en­ing new es­ca­la­tion in the al­ready height­ened ten­sions be­tween the po­lice and gang mem­bers of the Ras­ta City Al­liance Group (RCAG) and Mus­lim Gangs af­ter the po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing last week­end in the Mor­vant dis­trict."

The shoot­ings sparked off a se­ries of co­or­di­nat­ed protests on Tues­day as res­i­dents from many of the im­pov­er­ished com­mu­ni­ties across Trinidad joined to­geth­er to de­mand greater re­straint and ac­count­abil­i­ty by the po­lice.

This is not the first time that Grif­fith’s life has been threat­ened.

Back in May, a so­cial me­dia mes­sage post­ed to the In­sta­gram page of an al­leged gang­ster de­mand­ed Grif­fith re­lease three men who had been de­tained at the Four Roads Po­lice Sta­tion and if he failed to com­ply, his house would be sub­ject­ed to "bul­let".

Al­so tagged in that post was Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young.

In re­sponse to the post, Grif­fith chal­lenged them to make good on their threats as he promised a sim­ple apol­o­gy would not be enough to free them.

In No­vem­ber 2018, a 12-year-old pri­ma­ry school­boy from the East Port-of-Spain dis­trict plead­ed guilty to mis­us­ing a phone to is­sue death threats against Grif­fith

That in­ci­dent oc­curred around the same time that a sep­a­rate in­ves­ti­ga­tion was be­ing car­ried out af­ter a caller threat­ened to kill both the CoP and his wife, Nicole.

In 2010 as he led the North East­ern Di­vi­sion­al Task Force, Alexan­der who was a sergeant at the time, re­ceived death threats fol­low­ing the deaths of three Sea Lots res­i­dents.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Grif­fith did not con­firm if he was aware of the threat.

(See page 13)