Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith is draft­ing a plan to re­struc­ture the Po­lice Ser­vice and ex­pects to have the first plan be­fore the end of the year.

The new sys­tem in­cludes an App to help cit­i­zens re­port crime anony­mous­ly and im­proved bal­lis­tics in­ves­ti­ga­tions. He said that while in New York bal­lis­tics test­ing takes sev­er­al days, in T&T is takes up to six years.

Grif­fith at­tend­ed a po­lice me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain and took ques­tions from the me­dia on the cur­rent state of af­fairs.

“In the very near fu­ture, you would be see­ing a to­tal di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in our mo­bile pa­trols but things per­tain­ing to coastal pa­trols and you would be see­ing changes in how we deal with air op­er­a­tions, foren­sic test­ing, bal­lis­tics test­ing, im­prove­ments in how we use tech­nol­o­gy, white-col­lar crime, the re­vamp of the in­tel­li­gence sec­tion,” he said.

Grif­fith al­so urged cit­i­zens to get more in­volved.

“If you see some­thing, say some­thing. There is no such thing as the per­fect crime, some­one would know some­thing,” he said.

“But the on­ly time peo­ple seem to have bion­ic eyes is when the po­lice are in­volved,” he said.

He ad­mit­ted that some peo­ple are hes­i­tant to come for­ward with in­for­ma­tion be­cause the po­lice may al­so be in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“There is a fear and a con­cern of reprisal and what I would be do­ing is I would be pro­vid­ing an App for cit­i­zens to come out and give us in­for­ma­tion,” he said.

“I can­not put my head on a block that each and every po­lice of­fi­cer can be trust­ed. Re­mem­ber the Po­lice Ser­vice comes from so­ci­ety, our so­ci­ety is not per­fect,” he said.

Grif­fith gave the as­sur­ance that “things” are be­ing put in place to en­sure the safe­ty of those who re­port crim­i­nal po­lice of­fi­cers.

“We are putting sys­tems in place to en­sure a de­gree of ac­count­abil­i­ty for any po­lice of­fi­cer in­volved in po­lice ac­tiv­i­ty,” he said.

He warned the pub­lic that if they are aware of rogue po­lice of­fi­cers, in­stead of mak­ing a re­port at the po­lice sta­tion, mes­sage him di­rect­ly on 482-GARY

De­spite his vo­cif­er­ous de­fence of the Po­lice Ser­vice, the Com­mis­sion­er ad­mit­ted that some­times po­lice of­fi­cers may be wrong and urged cit­i­zens to make use of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA).

“Nev­er be­fore have we seen so many po­lice of­fi­cers been ar­rest­ed from kid­nap­ping to be­ing in­volved in gangs to fraud,” he said.

He did not have the ex­act fig­ures of how many were in­volved in these crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties but said some 300 of­fi­cers are cur­rent­ly sus­pend­ed.

“Some of them should nev­er see a po­lice uni­form in their life again,” he said.

He said he was al­ready “mon­i­tor­ing” 30 shoot­ers.

“I have been mon­i­tor­ing them like hawks now be­cause they have been in­stru­men­tal to the ma­jor­i­ty of homi­cides this year,” he said.

“Give us the in­for­ma­tion and we will deal with them, but you can­not be turn­ing a blind eye,” he said.

The out­spo­ken Com­mis­sion­er chid­ed the pub­lic for crit­i­cis­ing po­lice of­fi­cers for do­ing their job.

“It’s ei­ther we want to win this war on crime or not,” he said.

Part of that war is against hu­man traf­fick­ing and lo­cal broth­els. Grif­fith said that for years the Po­lice Ser­vice was con­demned for not do­ing what was re­quired.

“Now we have been push­ing that en­ve­lope and now au­to­mat­i­cal­ly, the red flags are be­ing trig­gered be­cause every time some­thing is done in this coun­try, you find an ex­cuse based on race. pol­i­tics or re­li­gion,” he said.

“I don’t have time to wor­ry about all three, I would re­spect all three but we would do what is re­quired and we will not turn a blind eye based on the per­cep­tion of what some­body will say,” he said.