RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has crit­i­cised the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s re­sponse to the re­cent rise in kid­nap­pings, de­scrib­ing cur­rent ef­forts as in­ef­fec­tive.

He yes­ter­day ques­tioned the strat­e­gy of form­ing spe­cialised units for in­di­vid­ual crimes with­out ad­dress­ing the root caus­es.

“The ques­tion should be asked, what has been done to curb not just kid­nap­pings, but oth­er as­pects of crime like ex­tor­tion and home in­va­sions?” Grif­fith said.

“Every time there’s a new type of crime, they form a new unit. That is not how you deal with the sit­u­a­tion.”

Grif­fith out­lined mea­sures tak­en un­der his tenure, which, he said, led to a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in kid­nap­pings for ran­som be­tween 2020 and 2021.

“We solved kid­nap­pings by kick­ing down doors, tar­get­ing kid­nap­pers, ar­rest­ing them, and res­cu­ing vic­tims while they were held.”

He claimed the move to dis­man­tle sys­tems, units, and tech­nolo­gies im­ple­ment­ed dur­ing his tenure has since em­bold­ened kid­nap­pers.

“The (Spe­cial) Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team, in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven op­er­a­tions, and close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the SSA are all gone,” he said.

“Kid­nap­pers now see this as an easy op­por­tu­ni­ty. There’s no clear re­sponse or ac­tion plan from the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to re­store pub­lic con­fi­dence.”

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad echoed Grif­fith’s con­cerns.

“The tech­nol­o­gy to de­tect and solve crimes al­ready ex­ists but we are not us­ing it,” he said.

Seep­er­sad cit­ed ex­am­ples of avail­able tools, in­clud­ing the abil­i­ty to track cell phones and analyse da­ta from glob­al plat­forms like Google.

“If Google can track cell phones world­wide and record their move­ments, why aren’t we us­ing that da­ta to iden­ti­fy sus­pects in kid­nap­pings?” he asked.

“For in­stance, in re­cent cas­es, we know the ex­act time and lo­ca­tion of in­ci­dents. We can use this da­ta to track phones at the scene and iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial per­pe­tra­tors.”

He claimed in­ac­tion is the pri­ma­ry is­sue.

“The lev­el of in­ac­tion in this coun­try is as­tound­ing. If we don’t use the tools and sys­tems avail­able to us, may­hem will con­tin­ue to rule.”

Ef­forts to reach Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, via TTPS cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions unit head Joanne Archie, were un­suc­cess­ful.