For­mer Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith claims that the truth about the Gov­ern­ment’s in­volve­ment in the con­tro­ver­sial 2022 ar­rest of Brent Thomas in Bar­ba­dos will soon be re­vealed af­ter the Bar­ba­dos gov­ern­ment ac­cept­ed li­a­bil­i­ty for breach­ing Thomas’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. He said he in­tends to write to the PCA and the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion on the mat­ter if need be.

Thomas, a firearms deal­er, was ar­rest­ed in Bar­ba­dos and brought back to this coun­try re­sult­ing in a cross-bor­der furore which led to probes in both Bar­ba­dos and T&T.

In a state­ment is­sued by his par­ty the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go will “soon face an­oth­er ex­am­ple of a bla­tant lie, which shows how de­cep­tive, im­moral and un­eth­i­cal the gov­ern­ment is.”

“I call on the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to do her job with­out fear or favour, and I urge the gov­ern­ment to im­me­di­ate­ly come clean and fire the Min­is­ter and oth­er of­fi­cials in­volved, so as to show some re­spect to cit­i­zens who de­serve the truth and who must be guar­an­teed that no one is un­touch­able.”

“I al­so wrote to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA), and af­ter the Min­is­ter’s name is re­vealed, I will write to the PCA again, as well as the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC), should Com­mis­sion­er (Er­la) Hare­wood-Christo­pher fail to ad­here to her re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to have this mat­ter thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed,” the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance po­lit­i­cal leader said.

When con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia, Thomas said he was not will­ing to speak at this time. At­tempts to con­tact At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, for a re­sponse were un­suc­cess­ful.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is ex­pect­ed to ad­dress the lat­est de­vel­op­ment re­gard­ing the Brent Thomas is­sue dur­ing its Cot­tage Meet­ing in Ca­roni Cen­tral this evening. The par­ty’s po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar will be the fea­tured speak­er at the meet­ing.

On Jan­u­ary 18, At­tor­ney Roger Forde, KC, wrote to Thomas’ le­gal team in Bar­ba­dos to in­di­cate that he was act­ing on be­half of Bar­ba­dos’ At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Dale Mar­shall.

The let­ter stat­ed, in part, that, “I have ad­vised my client that the state of Bar­ba­dos should ac­cept li­a­bil­i­ty in re­spect of the claim for breach of Sec­tion 18 of the Con­sti­tu­tion of Bar­ba­dos.

“In these cir­cum­stances, kind­ly send me a claim of quan­tum to­geth­er with au­thor­i­ties in sup­port of the same.”

Thomas is su­ing the Bar­ba­dos gov­ern­ment over his ‘forcible re­moval’ from the is­land in Oc­to­ber 2022. Sec­tion 18 of Bar­ba­dos’ con­sti­tu­tion speaks to pro­vi­sions to se­cure the pro­tec­tion of law.

In Oc­to­ber 2022, Thomas, a T&T cit­i­zen, was ar­rest­ed at a ho­tel in Bar­ba­dos, hand­ed over to T&T po­lice at the air­port and tak­en back to Trinidad to be charged with fire-re­lat­ed of­fences. Thomas was pre­vi­ous­ly ar­rest­ed and re­leased in Trinidad.

The Bar­ba­dos op­er­a­tion, ac­cord­ing to Bar­ba­dos At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Mar­shall, was ful­ly co­or­di­nat­ed by Cari­com Im­pacs. Thomas claimed he was mis­treat­ed and hu­mil­i­at­ed while in cus­tody.

In April 2023, High Court Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad per­ma­nent­ly stayed all crim­i­nal charges against the 61-year-old own­er of Spe­cial­ist Shoot­ers Train­ing Cen­tre. Ram­per­sad ruled that the ar­rest was un­law­ful, void­ing the ar­rest war­rants ob­tained by TTPS Sgt Matthew Hay­wood and ASP Birch.

“These in­ci­dents took place short­ly af­ter the Stan­ley John re­port came out as men­tioned by ASP Birch in re­la­tion to the grant­i­ng of firearms li­cens­es by the for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice, Gary Grif­fith, and it was clear­ly in the pub­lic do­main with re­spect to some sort of im­pro­pri­ety em­a­nat­ing from that tenure.

“One gets the im­pres­sion from the one-point­ed fo­cus that ASP Birch had on these claimants that he was de­ter­mined to find some­thing which could in­crim­i­nate the claimants notwith­stand­ing the doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence be­fore him,” Ram­per­sad said in his rul­ing.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad or­dered that Thomas be com­pen­sat­ed for breach­es and dam­age to his rep­u­ta­tion.

The State ap­pealed the de­ci­sion, claim­ing the judge erred in law.