Renu­ka Singh

Po­lice have iden­ti­fied one man as the ar­chi­tect be­hind yes­ter­day’s protests in Port-of-Spain and net­worked to dif­fer­ent ar­eas through­out the coun­try.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view on CNC3 yes­ter­day, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Gary Grif­fith said one man co-or­di­nat­ed with oth­er gang lead­ers to cre­ate the may­hem that un­fold­ed yes­ter­day.

“There was a de­lib­er­ate plot. There was a cer­tain in­di­vid­ual, we have in­tel­li­gence that he was the mas­ter­mind, was li­ais­ing with oth­er gang-lead­ers, speak­ing with them, co-or­di­nat­ing with them and then stand­ing up there and pre­tend­ing that he was God’s gift and try­ing to make every­thing right and pure,” Grif­fith said.

Grif­fith said one per­son with a small po­lit­i­cal par­ty was in­cit­ing the vi­o­lence and then stand­ing by and wait­ing to be in­ter­viewed for pub­lic re­la­tions pur­pos­es.

“I want to ask the pub­lic, please don’t be in­flu­enced by those who have their spe­cif­ic agen­da. You will see him stand­ing up where those protests are hop­ing that they could get some me­dia cov­er­age, hop­ing that they’d be in­ter­viewed. They have an agen­da,” he said.

While Grif­fith did not call names, he said the per­son he was re­fer­ring to did not be­long to ei­ther of the two main po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

He said those “in­di­vid­u­als” were linked to gang mem­bers.

“If the gang mem­bers are af­fil­i­at­ed or work­ing with any­one, that re­mains to be seen,” he said.

He said that the in­di­vid­u­als, who are se­nior gang mem­bers or­ches­trat­ed yes­ter­day’s may­hem.

Commissioner of Police, Gary Griffith.

“They went in­to hid­ing, they went in­to their lit­tle op­er­a­tion cen­tre through­out the day,” he said.

Grif­fith said to look out for the peo­ple call­ing them­selves “ac­tivists” and “politi­cians”.

“I am speak­ing about the in­di­vid­u­als who have no sup­port and they think to get sup­port is to hate the po­lice, at­tack the po­lice, de­monise the po­lice,” he said.

He said it was this ac­tion that put po­lice lives at risk. Grif­fith al­so warned that there was more to come. “The op­er­a­tion is def­i­nite­ly not over,” he said.

The plan of the protest, Grif­fith said, was to desta­bi­lize the coun­try. With re­gards to the re­port that there is an al­most 90 per cent in­crease in po­lice killings, Grif­fith said more peo­ple were shoot­ing at of­fi­cers.

“When we ar­rest over 7,000 per­sons in five years, for an il­le­gal firearm and every time we ar­rest them, they get back out un­to the streets,” he said.

“They are the ones who walk around with a firearm and know they would get bail the oth­er day,” he said.

“They have be­come so bold and ar­ro­gant, they shoot at po­lice of­fi­cers,” he said.

Grif­fith said if there was an in­crease, it was not be­cause the po­lice were just shoot­ing at peo­ple, it was be­cause more peo­ple were shoot­ing at of­fi­cers, forc­ing them to re­turn fire.

“We are not the ones draw­ing first blood,” he said.

“It stops to­day, we are not go­ing to al­low crim­i­nal el­e­ments to feel like you can con­trol any area, any block, any com­mu­ni­ty and then play the blame game,” he said.

“When the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­plete and I give the as­sur­ance to the pub­lic, as I have stat­ed over and over again, I am not go­ing to con­done any rogue el­e­ment or po­lice of­fi­cer that would abuse their au­thor­i­ty,” he said.

“We are not the en­e­my,” Grif­fith said.