As the ex­change of words be­tween Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith and po­lit­i­cal leader of the New Na­tion­al Vi­sion (NNV) Fuad Abu Bakr heats up, the top cop has chal­lenged Bakr to give his views per­tain­ing to what hap­pened in 1990, “or is it in his view that black lives did not mat­ter.”

Grif­fith was re­spond­ing to an on­go­ing so­cial me­dia rant by Bakr since the US George Floyd in­ci­dent where Bakr saw it fit­ting to post a com­par­a­tive pho­to­graph of him (Grif­fith) watch­ing over the life­less body of Michael Thomas dur­ing a con­fronta­tion with po­lice in 2019, with the death of Floyd.

Grif­fith said Bakr is try­ing to make him­self rel­e­vant by be­ing in­volved in con­tro­ver­sial is­sues.

“Fuad Abu Bakr is the first po­lit­i­cal leader that I can re­call pri­or to an elec­tion, who is try­ing to make him­self rel­e­vant by be­ing in­volved in con­tro­ver­sial is­sues than any­thing else…this varies from storm­ing a screen­ing in a po­lit­i­cal par­ty and now, speak­ing about me know­ing that the me­dia will take it up.” Grif­fith said.

He added: “This seems to be his man­i­festo go­ing in­to an elec­tion by him putting a pho­to­graph of me look­ing at an in­di­vid­ual who blew the head off of one of my po­lice of­fi­cers and that same killer tries to do the same at oth­er of­fi­cers and was right­ly neu­tralised with the same weapon he took from my of­fi­cer’s pos­ses­sion. By Fuad Abu Bakr try­ing to com­pare that to what hap­pened in Min­neapo­lis showed ig­no­rance at a high­er lev­el.”

Grif­fith re­it­er­at­ed that, “in­stead of try­ing to play con­sta­ble Brown, ask him to give his views per­tain­ing to what hap­pened in 1990 or is it in his view that back lives did not mat­ter.” 

On Thurs­day, in a Face­book post, Bakr said he “raised the is­sue on be­half of cit­i­zen’s whose hous­es are searched with­out war­rants, who have been cursed by the po­lice, abused and in in­stances killed by the po­lice.”

Bakr not­ed that po­lice abuse is an is­sue, “In­ter­nalised racism, racial pro­fil­ing and prej­u­dice are con­cerns. Exju­di­cial killings are a se­ri­ous is­sue. Lo­cal­ly, we have one of the high­est per capi­ta rates for com­plaints against the po­lice. The num­ber of cit­i­zens, who you re­fer to as ‘crim­i­nals and cock­roach­es’, killed by the po­lice is un­ac­cept­able and has drawn the at­ten­tion of hu­man rights agen­cies,” Bakr said in his post.

He added that he is on the side of the po­lice, “guid­ing them to bet­ter ser­vice through con­struc­tive, brave crit­i­cism.”

“As many brave of­fi­cers step out every day to dis­charge their du­ty, they should be en­cour­aged in right ac­tions. I praise the ex­cel­lent of­fi­cers who serve with pride. It’s noth­ing per­son­al even though in my opin­ion you have per­son­alised the po­lice. I mean when you are gone, do we still call 684-GARY? Lord alone knows what we will do with­out you Dou­ble G. The sta­tis­tics show you have made phe­nom­e­nal shifts in your rat­ings since the Peo­ples Part­ner ship sank. But you know how these things are, ups and downs. Hero to­day, ze­ro to­mor­row. Quite the op­po­site to the mur­der rate, on­ly ups there. Noth­ing lasts for­ev­er, of­fice is on­ly for an ap­point­ed term. All the best for the rest of that short pe­ri­od.”