For­mer Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith says the mas­sive grid­lock that oc­curred on Thurs­day was due to an ab­sence of lead­er­ship. He made ref­er­ence to sev­er­al in­ci­dents in­clud­ing the tragedy in­volv­ing the divers at Paria where he said "yet again, with no one tak­ing com­mand and con­trol to co­or­di­nate and make in­formed de­ci­sions, for 72 hours, noth­ing was done that in­evitably led to their deaths. 

The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from Gary Grif­fith:

The mas­sive traf­fic grid­lock that oc­curred on Thurs­day, was yet again, due to noth­ing oth­er than ab­sence of lead­er­ship. 
 
This was no dif­fer­ent to the Day of To­tal Polic­ing and the na­tion­wide black­out, when com­plete chaos and con­fu­sion, be­came the or­der of the day, cou­pled with an ab­sence of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and co­or­di­na­tion amongst rel­e­vant bod­ies. One can al­so re­fer to the tragedy in­volv­ing the divers at Paria, when yet again, with no one tak­ing com­mand and con­trol to co­or­di­nate and make in­formed de­ci­sions, for 72 hours, noth­ing was done that in­evitably led to their deaths. 
 
One could re­fer to how such in­ci­dents were dealt with from 2018 to 2021, in­clud­ing Car­ni­val 2020, where not one ma­jor in­ci­dent was re­port­ed, or the mas­sive flood in Ch­agua­nas that vir­tu­al­ly di­vid­ed the coun­try for hours, or the well-planned ri­ots in­volv­ing 33 si­mul­ta­ne­ous block­ing of roads and 150 men walk­ing in­to Port of Spain to van­dal­ize the na­tion's cap­i­tal.  All ef­fec­tive­ly man­aged and con­trolled. 
 
The dif­fer­ence then, was prop­er co­or­di­na­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion via the use of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre, which was de­signed for such in­ci­dents. This en­sured that in­con­ve­nience was at a min­i­mum, through prop­er co­or­di­na­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion by rel­e­vant bod­ies. 
 
All it takes is to an­a­lyze the sit­u­a­tion and de­sign an im­me­di­ate op­er­a­tional plan to elim­i­nate or re­duce the prob­lem, whilst main­tain­ing open chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. 
 
In to­tal con­trast, now we are see­ing a lack of or­ga­ni­za­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and co­or­di­na­tion, neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ing the Na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. This is made worse, when the var­i­ous arms of law en­force­ment do not seem to em­ploy any op­er­a­tion sys­tem de­signed to min­i­mize in­con­ve­nience or fear. In my tenure, the team em­ployed the use of the TTPS app, na­tion­wide text mes­sages and hourly up­dates to the pub­lic, to en­sure an ef­fi­cient re­sponse and man­age­ment struc­ture. 
 
The mas­sive grid­lock in the West of Trinidad was due pri­mar­i­ly to the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Min­istry of Works and Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties not co­or­di­nat­ing with each oth­er and the Po­lice Ser­vice to en­sure a prop­er, im­me­di­ate, and ef­fec­tive plan. 
 
It al­so does not help when the new­ly es­tab­lished Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, com­pris­ing not one per­son trained, qual­i­fied or ex­pe­ri­enced in law en­force­ment, looks at the 3rd most se­nior Po­lice Of­fi­cer present­ly in ACP Archie, and by­pass­es her for the post of a Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, be­cause they see her Mas­ter’s De­gree as be­ing in Mass Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and they fool­ish­ly did not see this qual­i­fi­ca­tion as any­thing of val­ue in polic­ing. 
 
One of the pri­ma­ry rea­sons that the pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence in the TTPS moved from 14% when I took up the post to 55 % on my de­par­ture was as a di­rect re­sult of ef­fec­tive, time­ly, pro­fes­sion­al, and fac­tu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion. 
 
So, ex­pect fur­ther con­fu­sion, frus­tra­tion and un­forced er­rors in most as­pects of gov­er­nance to con­tin­ue, due to a void in lead­er­ship and poor plan­ning. At least un­til those who hold such po­si­tions demit of­fice. The soon­er the bet­ter.