PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith spent a con­sid­er­able amount of time on his wed­ding an­niver­sary re­spond­ing to crit­ics and de­fend­ing his de­ci­sion to host a Christ­mas event at his of­fi­cial res­i­dence on Sat­ur­day.

Grif­fith took to so­cial me­dia to fire back at the peo­ple who ques­tioned the tim­ing of the cel­e­bra­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the mur­der toll for the year. He was scathing in some of his re­spons­es and ad­dressed the is­sue in a sim­i­lar fash­ion dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing yes­ter­day.

“If I have to ex­pose ig­no­rance, stu­pid­i­ty, bias, peo­ple who have their own is­sues against Gary Grif­fith. It is my right to de­fend my­self, to de­fend my name, to clar­i­fy any mat­ter of mis­con­cep­tion with false or mis­lead­ing in­for­ma­tion to try to dis­cred­it me,” he said.

“In fact to­day is my an­niver­sary. In the eyes of some peo­ple, I shouldn’t take my wife out be­cause I should be work­ing. So the homi­cide rate is high, I shouldn’t have an of­fi­cial event that the com­mis­sion­ers have had for the last 20 years, so be­cause it is Gary Grif­fith it be­comes a con­cern,” he said.

The Com­mis­si0ner ex­plained that he tried to use the event to get sev­er­al ma­jor stake­hold­ers to­geth­er and bring in­to fo­cus plans for the coun­try in the com­ing year. In­stead, he saw the nar­ra­tive changed neg­a­tive­ly.

“It turns to a par­ty in­stead of an of­fi­cial event. It turns from the fact that in­stead of peo­ple see­ing the val­ue of try­ing to bring ma­jor stake­hold­ers to­geth­er that have af­fect­ed or could ben­e­fit the de­vel­op­ment of our coun­try, it be­comes a con­cern. We like too much bac­cha­nal and gos­sip. That does noth­ing to de­vel­op our so­ci­ety,” he said.

Al­though he con­ced­ed that the pub­lic is con­cerned about the high homi­cide rate, Grif­fith de­fend­ed the work of his of­fi­cers who he said should be giv­en cred­it for do­ing the best they can.

“More firearms are en­ter­ing the coun­try but we ex­pect the homi­cide rate to be re­duced. More per­sons are get­ting ac­cess to easy bail, but we ex­pect the homi­cide rate to be re­duced/ When we ar­rest these per­sons and they get in prison they still have ac­cess to call hits on per­sons but we ex­pect the homi­cide rate to re­duce. The po­lice ser­vice did all we could have done,” he said, re­peat­ing his call to de­ny bail to per­sons held with il­le­gal firearms.

“Noth­ing has changed, what I can say. In 2013-2014 when I was Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, you were caught with an il­le­gal firearm you’re out. There’s no get out of jail free card. It worked,” he said.

“My last 45 days in Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, there were 18 homi­cides, the rea­son be­ing the crim­i­nal el­e­ment knew that there was no get out of jail,” he said.

“When I see the Law As­so­ci­a­tion stat­ing they are con­cerned about my con­cern that per­sons held with firearms have a right to be giv­en bail, where was the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, where was their view on this in 2013, 2014 when the sun­set clause was al­lowed and ap­proved that per­sons held with a firearm will stay were they be­long away from free­dom,” Grif­fith asked.