Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day as­sured that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice was work­ing to close all high pro­file cas­es be­fore it, in­clud­ing probes in­to the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed and Life­s­port.

He made the com­ment dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain, as he not­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions have been on­go­ing for the last six years and he be­lieved every­one has been aware of the ac­tions of the TTPS.

How­ev­er, he said, “on­ly if and when it can be brought for­ward, whether the case can be closed or ar­rests take place, will we make com­ments to the pub­lic.”

“I’ve stat­ed be­fore and con­tin­ue to give the as­sur­ance that all gates will be closed, one way or the oth­er and we did it with day of to­tal polic­ing; Email­gate; PM plant-like sub­stance; sit­u­a­tion with Mr Nel­son. I in­tend to do the same with Life­s­port, EM­BD, there is al­so AV Drilling and a few oth­er mat­ters in­volv­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials,” Grif­fith said.

Grif­fith said there will be a de­gree of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty as there are a num­ber of things go­ing on with the cas­es, in­clud­ing work­ing with their Unit­ed King­dom coun­ter­parts, who were cho­sen by him (Grif­fith) per­son­al­ly, as he said some of the cas­es had gone on for far too long. 

“So now, be­cause of the de­gree of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, there were very few leaks. I saw some­one brought up state­ments made by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Sec­re­tary a few years lat­er. What we have here, it was all in the pub­lic do­main, there is a lot I have in my back pock­et that I am aware of but we are work­ing close­ly with the rel­e­vant agen­cies,” he said.

Grif­fith al­so said the TTPS was proud of its cur­rent record of charg­ing more peo­ple for mur­der than 2019 based on prop­er in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing, re­struc­tur­ing of its crime in­ves­ti­ga­tions team, use of tech­nol­o­gy and the as­sis­tance of hu­man in­tel­li­gence. He said this showed the TTPS is go­ing “in the right di­rec­tion.”

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Op­er­a­tions) Mc Don­ald Ja­cobs added that with­in the last two months the TTPS had seen a sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in the de­tec­tion rate for mur­ders this year. 

He said in the first four and a half months of the year, they had solved 20 mur­ders and from the mid­dle of May to yes­ter­day they had solved 21 mur­ders. 

“So there is a 100 per cent im­prove­ment in de­tec­tion rate,” Ja­cobs said.

“Last we spoke I men­tioned the ac­tu­al im­ple­men­ta­tion of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion ap­proach for the in­ves­ti­ga­tions of mur­ders. In this co­or­di­nat­ed ap­proach, we took in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the 24/48 hour re­quire­ments to en­sure all tech­ni­cal, sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal per­son­nel work to­geth­er as a team bring­ing in sig­nif­i­cant re­sults.

“For the year so far, 47 mur­ders less than last year, we con­tin­ue with that im­prove­ment…We want the of­fi­cers to con­tin­ue in the man­ner they are car­ry­ing it about, as we bring to­geth­er the sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal as­pects, all merged to­geth­er, to get this re­sult.”