Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young yes­ter­day gave his full sup­port to Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith’s “One shot, one kill” di­rec­tive to of­fi­cers who are shot at by would-be crim­i­nals.

Grif­fith adopt­ed the mantra in Oc­to­ber, af­ter po­lice of­fi­cers were in­volved in a shootout in Trou Macaque, Laven­tille, in which five peo­ple were killed. He reaf­firmed it this week af­ter es­caped pris­on­er Ted­dy Singh, Tony Keron Joseph and Clace Daniel Phillip were al­so killed in a po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in a forest­ed area in Ma­tu­ri­ta, Ari­ma. (See oth­er sto­ry)

Grif­fith’s new use of force po­lice pol­i­cy has drawn crit­i­cism from Fix­in T&T head Kirk Waite, who says this state­ment and fur­ther rhetoric points to the mil­i­tari­sa­tion of the po­lice ser­vice. Both men have en­gaged in a war of words over the mat­ter.

Ques­tioned on the ap­proach at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing how­ev­er, Young said po­lice of­fi­cers have his full sup­port pro­vid­ed their ac­tion falls with­in the precincts of the law

“If po­lice of­fi­cers come un­der fire from crim­i­nals it is well with­in the law for po­lice of­fi­cers to re­turn fire not on­ly to de­fend them­selves as in­di­vid­u­als but al­so pub­lic safe­ty and if that is the realm that they op­er­ate in then they have my full sup­port- once they op­er­ate with­in the pa­ra­me­ters of the law,” Young said.

The par­tic­u­lar “one shot, one kill” term is used by mil­i­tary and refers to pre­ci­sion shoot­ing in de­liv­er­ing one shot to the head.

While re­frain­ing from spe­cif­ic ref­er­ence to the term and its in­tent yes­ter­day, Young ex­plained the line of fire is ex­treme­ly volatile.

“I’ve seen it sug­gest­ed out there that po­lice of­fi­cers in in­stances should shoot for body parts etcetera, etcetera ... I sus­pect in a gun­fight it just sim­ply doesn’t op­er­ate that way be­cause there’s a lot com­ing at you - it’s in a very short space of time. Any­one who has ever han­dled firearms etcetera knows that this con­cept of shoot them in the leg, shoot him in his leg - it just doesn’t op­er­ate that way.

“If crim­i­nals go and de­cide they go­ing to shoot at po­lice of­fi­cers, men and women of the De­fence Force, I would ex­pect and the law does pro­vide for them to pro­tect them­selves.”

But ac­cord­ing to Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty head David West, there was no “one shot, one kill pol­i­cy” with­in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s Use of Force Pol­i­cy. He al­so point­ed out that there is no “shoot to dis­arm” pol­i­cy. West, how­ev­er, agreed with Young that if so chal­lenged, po­lice can re­turn fire in self-de­fence and in the in­ter­est of pub­lic safe­ty.

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Fix­in T&T pres­i­dent Wait­he chal­lenged Grif­fith, Young, Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion and the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty to show him and the coun­try where “one shot, one kill” is in­scribed in the TTPS’ use of force pol­i­cy or in the train­ing of po­lice of­fi­cers.

In di­rect re­sponse to Young on the mat­ter, Wait­he told Guardian Me­dia many of the men­tioned au­thor­i­ties re­fused to en­gage di­rect­ly the term and its in­tent.

“Where is this a part of po­lice train­ing and use of force pol­i­cy? One shot, one kill is about sniper train­ing, mil­i­tary train­ing. It’s not about polic­ing. The com­bi­na­tion of that mantra with the Com­mis­sion­er’s use of words like “cock­roach­es” and “an­i­mals” to de­scribe peo­ple of this coun­try who he be­lieves are in­volved crim­i­nals ac­tiv­i­ty is dan­ger­ous,” Wait­he said.

He fur­ther cau­tioned: “We main­tain the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er’s rhetoric is putting his very of­fi­cers, our very of­fi­cers, at risk.”