For­mer Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith has de­scribed the se­ries of events that led to yes­ter­day’s court rul­ing, as a “frontal at­tack on democ­ra­cy” and main­tains that there was a cal­cu­lat­ed plot to re­move him.

He in­sists, though, that his ser­vice to coun­try is not over, de­spite a court rul­ing that has made his act­ing CoP ap­point­ment null and void.

He al­so crit­i­cised de­part­ments of State which he said were re­spon­si­ble for the chaos re­gard­ing the reap­point­ment of a new CoP and ac­cused some of be­ing at the front of an at­tack on democ­ra­cy.

“This is not about Gary Grif­fith. This is about Trinidad and To­ba­go and our in­sti­tu­tions. To this day, this minute, I am yet to be told what has been my ‘crime’ and who is my ac­cuser.

“I have been asked to de­fend my­self from some­thing as of yet not spelt out, and as was con­firmed, that I was not the sub­ject of any in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“If as the then sit­ting Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, this type of vi­o­la­tion of prin­ci­ples of nat­ur­al jus­tice could be cast aside in the full view of the pub­lic by those with the pow­er, well then this says much more about our in­sti­tu­tions, sys­tems and lead­ers than it can ever say about me,” he said in a state­ment af­ter the rul­ing.

He said through­out this pe­ri­od, the na­tion has watched “a mas­sive con­spir­a­cy by a few who seem bent on do­ing all that they can to en­sure that I do not sit in the seat of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.”

“A few el­e­ments with­in this coun­try ap­pear to thrive on con­fu­sion and bac­cha­nal and on this, I have no in­ten­tion of en­gag­ing, for to en­gage is to sug­gest I need this job for my own per­son­al ben­e­fit.

“If the pow­ers that be do not want me in of­fice, that’s their pre­rog­a­tive. Ser­vice to coun­try comes in many var­ied per­mu­ta­tions,” he said.

He con­tin­ued: “There are cer­tain in­sti­tu­tions that held all the pow­er. I could have been told at any stage that a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion was pre­ferred. There was no need to at­tempt to im­pugn my in­tegri­ty. This is the on­ly as­pect of this saga that I will con­tin­ue to fight to the end.”

As part of his claim of a con­spir­a­cy, he point­ed to:

“Two mer­it lists for act­ing and sub­stan­tive ap­point­ments be­ing with­held,

Bla­tant false state­ments made by the then PSC chair­man that I was in­ter­fer­ing with an in­ves­ti­ga­tion,

PSC chair­man hav­ing me sus­pend­ed with­out au­tho­ri­sa­tion or ra­tio­nale,

One spe­cif­ic of­fi­cial be­ing out of place to tell me not to re­port to work, and then re­fer­ring to me as a civil­ian as if this is some­thing that is de­mean­ing in his eyes,

And a one-man mi­nor­i­ty re­port from a two-mem­ber com­mit­tee by some­one with no law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ty, mak­ing false al­le­ga­tions with­out a shred of ev­i­dence, be­ing leaked to a me­dia re­porter, and pub­lished, all in an at­tempt to af­fect my char­ac­ter.”

He said this demon­strat­ed a “lev­el of des­per­a­tion to have me re­moved from of­fice with­out due process.”

He added, “The PSC chair­man op­er­at­ed in­di­vid­u­al­ly, il­le­gal­ly with im­puni­ty and as is the case in this coun­try, will like­ly face no con­se­quences what­so­ev­er. But as I said ear­li­er, in this town, bac­cha­nal be­comes news and folk­lore be­comes fact.”

Grif­fith al­so took is­sue with a politi­cian who told him to stay at home and re­ferred to him as a civil­ian. Al­though he did not call a name, those com­ments were all at­trib­uted to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds in var­i­ous me­dia re­ports over the last few weeks.

He said:“We are wit­ness­ing a frontal at­tack on our democ­ra­cy.There is cur­rent­ly no re­gard for the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers. De­spite the Prime Min­is­ter stat­ing re­cent­ly that ‘sergeants could keep sargeant­i­ng, and in­spec­tors could keep in­spect­ing’ with­out a sit­ting Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, and whilst I un­der­stand this to im­ply seem­ing­ly there is no re­al mer­it placed on the of­fice of CoP, I still wish to take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to thank the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be of ser­vice.”

He added: “In hind­sight, per­haps my be­ing ‘too ef­fi­cient, too in­de­pen­dent and too im­par­tial of ser­vice,’ may have been con­tribut­ing fac­tors to this saga.

“To the men and women of the TTPS, I en­cour­age you to ig­nore those who seek to im­pugn your work eth­ic stat­ing that you are on­ly op­er­at­ing at 40% ca­pac­i­ty. I saw your in­puts, over the last three years, and whilst there is al­ways room for im­prove­ment, there is no room for un­called for de­base­ment.”

He end­ed by say­ing: “Hav­ing served as a Mil­i­tary Of­fi­cer, Mil­i­tary At­taché’ to a Pres­i­dent and Prime Min­is­ter, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­vi­sor and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, I can safe­ly say, this civil­ian un­der­stands the mean­ing of the word ser­vice, and will await the next strate­gic move in treat­ing with the al­ready com­plet­ed and de­liv­ered mer­it list. I can as­sure you, my days of ser­vice are not over.”