Sup­port con­tin­ues to come in for the re­ten­tion of Gary Grif­fith as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, with a promi­nent busi­ness­man adding his voice among those say­ing it would be a blow to the fight against crime to lose him.

In a news re­lease is­sued to­day, im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent of the Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (ABA), Reval Chat­ter­goon, writes that even though crime sta­tis­tics are still fair­ly high in the North­ern Di­vi­sion, in­to which Ari­ma falls, there was “an im­me­di­ate de­cline in 2019 when the Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith would have served a full year in of­fice af­ter be­ing ap­point­ed in Ju­ly 2018, and no­table de­creas­es in crimes for 2020 and 2021”.

He quotes of­fi­cial po­lice sta­tis­tics which show that “All Crimes” re­port­ed re­duced from 12,013 in 2013, to 8,336 in 2020, with a to­tal of 4,902 to Ju­ly 2021.  Mur­ders fell from 408 in 2013, peaked at 536 in 2019, but fell again in 2020 to 393, with 214 record­ed to Ju­ly 2021. In ad­di­tion, shoot­ing and wound­ing in­ci­dents fell from 542 in 2013, to 401 in 2020, with 357 to Ju­ly 2021; while there were 2,958 rob­beries in 2013, with a peak of 3,239 in 2018, fol­lowed by a drop to 1,826 in 2020, with 910 record­ed to Ju­ly 2021.

He com­mend­ed Mr Grif­fith’s hands-on ap­proach to crime-fight­ing, re­call­ing his at­ten­dance at the ABA’s meet­ing on the FUL is­sue in May 2018, and at its Town Hall meet­ing in Jan­u­ary 2019.

“This is the first Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice that has made him­self ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic, who is not afraid of crit­i­cism and who is not afraid to fight crim­i­nal el­e­ments. This is the on­ly Com­mis­sion­er that has made him­self avail­able to meet pub­licly with mem­bers of the Ari­ma busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and its res­i­dents and has re­spond­ed to par­tic­i­pants at these meet­ings. I am see­ing the progress that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is mak­ing and the ef­forts to dig­i­tize and stream­line the ser­vice to be eas­i­ly ac­cessed by the pub­lic,” he said.

He added: “I sin­cere­ly hope that Cap­tain Gary Grif­fith’s con­tract is re­newed so that con­ti­nu­ity would be main­tained in re­vi­tal­iz­ing the TTPS, ad­dress­ing crim­i­nal­i­ty and re­spond­ing to more than 5,000 FUL ap­pli­ca­tions in his next term.”

Mr Chat­ter­goon al­so states in his re­lease his sup­port for Gary Grif­fith’s po­si­tion on the is­su­ing of Firearm User’s Li­cences (FULs). 

“Giv­ing a vet­ted cit­i­zen a fight­ing chance to de­fend him­self/her­self, their fam­i­ly and their prop­er­ty is not ir­re­spon­si­ble but a rea­son­able re­sponse from a Com­mis­sion­er who is apt­ly qual­i­fied to give a re­sponse,” the for­mer ABA pres­i­dent ar­gues.

Un­der Mr Chat­ter­goon’s stew­ard­ship, the ABA was suc­cess­ful in its le­gal fight on be­half of FUL ap­pli­cants, which led to then Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith be­ing court-or­dered to re­spond in a time­ly man­ner to ap­pli­cants con­cern­ing the sta­tus of their li­cense ap­pli­ca­tions.

The (now Act­ing) Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith has gone on record on the is­sue, stat­ing that the law pro­vides for cit­i­zens to be grant­ed FULs to se­cure firearms, once they are qual­i­fied to use them, even as he not­ed that cit­i­zens in this coun­try do not have a con­sti­tu­tion­al right to bear firearms, as ob­tains in oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions.

“There is a pro­ce­dure to fol­low when ap­ply­ing for an FUL and an­oth­er for ap­peal­ing a neg­a­tive re­sponse for an FUL,” Mr Chat­ter­goon writes.  “This high­ly vet­ted process has been im­ple­ment­ed to safe­guard cit­i­zens from ad hoc is­suance of firearms to per­sons who are in­ca­pable of re­spon­si­bly han­dling and own­ing one. While it is dis­ap­point­ing that two ser­vice­men may have ex­pe­ri­enced a neg­li­gent dis­charge, and un­for­tu­nate that an FUL hold­er ex­pe­ri­enced a sim­i­lar fate, how many legal­ly is­sued firearms were in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty? Now, how many le­gal firearms were used to foil a crim­i­nal act?”

He ob­serves: “Again, this high­ly vet­ted process to ap­ply for an FUL is fol­lowed by an­oth­er process to reg­is­ter the firearm with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and un­der­go bal­lis­tic test­ing to en­able any dis­charge from the firearm to be traced.”

The for­mer ABA pres­i­dent de­scribes him­self as “a cit­i­zen of this coun­try whose life and liveli­hood are af­fect­ed by crime” and main­tains the fo­cus should be kept on crime fight­ing.

He rec­om­mends plac­ing greater em­pha­sis on crime pre­ven­tion ini­tia­tives, equip­ping the TTPS with tools need­ed to do their job ef­fi­cient­ly, in­creas­ing the crime de­tec­tion rate, as well as de­mand­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty with­in the TTPS and the jus­tice sys­tem. 

He al­so calls for the en­force­ment of manda­to­ry train­ing for FUL hold­ers, “rather than fo­cus­ing on how many firearms an FUL hold­er should be legal­ly per­mit­ted to have in his/her pos­ses­sion; es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the quan­ti­ty and cal­i­bre of il­le­gal firearms be­ing bran­dished by crim­i­nals.”