Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Re­tired for­mer as­sis­tant com­mis­sion­er of po­lice To­taram Dookhie was not the on­ly se­nior of­fi­cer to ques­tion for­mer CoP Gary Grif­fith’s treat­ment of high-pro­file crim­i­nal cas­es in­volv­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials dur­ing his tenure.

Ac­cord­ing to a June 2020 T&T Po­lice Ser­vice let­ter seen by Guardian Me­dia, then-act­ing in­spec­tor Sheri­don Hill (who re­tired as an ASP) wrote to act­ing As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent Nor­ie­ga on the TTPS’ han­dling of cer­tain cas­es.

The let­ter was part of High Court doc­u­ments filed by Dookhie’s le­gal team last Fri­day.

“It ap­pears the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive of the PSB (Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau) and the TTPS by ex­ten­sion, lacks the req­ui­site in­tegri­ty and moral au­thor­i­ty to in­ves­ti­gate any al­le­ga­tion of se­ri­ous mis­con­duct against se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers and high-rank­ing pub­lic of­fi­cials.

“The man­ner in which my col­leagues and I were trans­ferred from the PSB, to­geth­er with the man­ner in which Mr Dookhie was sent on leave and the ef­forts to frus­trate him in his pur­suit of com­ple­tion and sub­mis­sion of the court file in the Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald mat­ter, leads me to con­clude that the ad­min­is­tra­tion of CoP Grif­fith is on a ma­li­cious vendet­ta against me, Mr Dookhie and rest of these for­mer PSB of­fi­cers, as in­di­cat­ed by Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Sama­roo, im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing Mr Ce­cil Skeete’s de­par­ture from the PSB Of­fice,” Hill wrote in the let­ter, in re­sponse to a re­quest for him to sub­mit all doc­u­ments/in­for­ma­tion in his pos­ses­sion rel­a­tive to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­cern­ing Grif­fith and/or Ce­cil Skeete.

Skeete, a for­mer mem­ber of the Ras­ta City Gang, had ac­cused Grif­fith, when he was CoP, of as­sault­ing him at the Four Roads Po­lice Sta­tion. How­ev­er, Grif­fith de­nied the al­le­ga­tions, claim­ing some mem­bers of the me­dia were part of an at­tempt to get him out of of­fice.

Skeete then re­tract­ed his sto­ry. The 50-year-old Co­corite man was mur­dered out­side his home in De­cem­ber 2019.

In his let­ter, Hill said Dookhie—who is su­ing the of­fices of the CoP and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al for al­leged in­fringe­ment of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights—was hound­ed out of of­fice.

Hill al­leged that sev­er­al mem­bers of the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau, in­clud­ing him­self, were vic­timised af­ter the unit be­gan tak­ing the Skeete in­ves­ti­ga­tion more se­ri­ous­ly. Apart from him­self, Hill said ten oth­er PSB of­fi­cers were trans­ferred im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter with­out a word from the ad­min­is­tra­tion.

On Mon­day, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that for­mer PSB head, re­tired as­sis­tant com­mis­sion­er Dookhie, made claims of al­leged po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence—through for­mer com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith—in sev­er­al high-pro­file in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­volv­ing the late Port-of-Spain Mp Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, new At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Camille Robin­son-Reg­is and for­mer Sports Min­is­ter Dar­ryl Smith.

Dookhie is su­ing the of­fices of the CoP and AG, claim­ing he was treat­ed un­fair­ly un­der Grif­fith and was de­nied pro­mo­tion.

Grif­fith: God is very good

In re­sponse, Grif­fith said about Dookhie, “No­tice, this man left of­fice three years ago and he nev­er saw fit un­til now—a month be­fore the Gen­er­al Elec­tions. No­tice the tim­ing and who his at­tor­neys are, and let the coun­try judge for it­self.

“This man was do­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion and was in the process of ar­rest­ing a min­is­ter and said he did not need to in­form the com­mis­sion­er. I want the coun­try to un­der­stand the men­tal­i­ty of this in­di­vid­ual. A min­is­ter was go­ing to be ar­rest­ed and he said he did not have to in­form the com­mis­sion­er.”

Re­gard­ing the con­tents of the let­ter from Hill, Grif­fith said there was a plot back then to get him out of of­fice as com­mis­sion­er.

“God is very good. Some­times when peo­ple do evil it comes back to them and it haunts them. There was a mas­sive con­spir­a­cy in­volv­ing sev­er­al se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers—in­clud­ing a se­nior of­fi­cer —where there was a con­spir­a­cy in the hope that they could have a com­mis­sion­er of po­lice re­moved based on friv­o­lous al­le­ga­tions. They were util­is­ing the in­di­vid­ual known as Ce­cil Skeete. There were re­ports that I may have threat­ened him and com­mit­ted cer­tain ac­tions against him. Lit­tle did they know that the same Ce­cil Skeete that they were li­ais­ing with and hop­ing he could as­sist them in the con­spir­a­cy, was ac­tu­al­ly one of my in­for­mants down in Co­corite, so he was bring­ing every­thing back to my at­ten­tion. He then sub­mit­ted a sworn af­fi­davit to show that every­thing that was be­ing stat­ed by these in­di­vid­u­als was a lie and that he was asked to be part of the con­spir­a­cy to have me re­moved from of­fice based on them try­ing to trump up al­le­ga­tions.”

He added, “In a very cu­ri­ous man­ner, Mr Skeete was then killed, but the sworn af­fi­davit was done. I still have mes­sages be­tween him and my­self to con­firm that he was an ac­tu­al in­for­mant work­ing for me to give me cer­tain in­for­ma­tion to try and pin­point cer­tain crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.