For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith says his suc­ces­sor, cur­rent act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob, has blocked all phone calls and mes­sages from him.

Grif­fith made the state­ment dur­ing an in­ter­view with Blaze (An­cil Isaac Jnr) on the Grand Slam Morn­ing show on Slam 100.5FM yes­ter­day.

“When you have an act­ing com­mis­sion­er of po­lice who would block the mes­sages and phone calls from a pre­vi­ous com­mis­sion­er, in­stead of want­i­ng to get my as­sis­tance or even com­mu­ni­cate with me, you block me, that is child­ish,” Grif­fith said.

“So act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ja­cob has ac­tu­al­ly blocked you from any com­mu­ni­ca­tion with him?” Blaze asked.

“Now that is how im­ma­ture he is and what has made it worse is he has to­tal­ly politi­cised the Po­lice Ser­vice,” Grif­fith claimed.

Grif­fith said this coun­try’s mur­der count is cur­rent­ly on course to hit the 600 mark and that was not be­cause of the of­fi­cers but be­cause of a lack of lead­er­ship in the ser­vice.

“Mr Ja­cob has made Stephen Williams look like James Bond,” Grif­fith said.

Williams held the post of act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er be­fore Grif­fith was ap­point­ed.

Grif­fith said the first way to stop a prob­lem is to iden­ti­fy there is, in fact, a prob­lem.

Ja­cob was last week re­port­ed as say­ing that this coun­try’s mur­der toll was “not out of hand.”

“So when we look at the num­bers, we can see they are with­in a sim­i­lar range for the pre-COVID years, and while we are alarmed and con­cerned, we are treat­ing with the killings, and things are not out of hand. We are ap­proach­ing and deal­ing with the sit­u­a­tion as nec­es­sary,” Ja­cob was re­port­ed to have said.

How­ev­er, Grif­fith, whose con­tract as CoP ex­pired on Au­gust 17, 2021, yes­ter­day said the crime sit­u­a­tion was the worst the coun­try had seen.

“This is the high­est spike in crime in the his­to­ry of T&T, there has nev­er been a spike so high,” Grif­fith said.

A search is cur­rent­ly on­go­ing for a sub­stan­tive po­lice com­mis­sion­er.

The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) has placed news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ments for a “suit­ably qual­i­fied” per­son to fill the po­si­tion of CoP.

Ja­cob had pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed he would con­sid­er ap­ply­ing for the job.