Gail Alexan­der

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith hasn’t re­signed, he’s stick­ing to his guns—and he’s dis­ap­point­ed about an ar­ti­cle where Gov­ern­ment sources crit­i­cised his re­cent state­ments about Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing ru­mours sur­fac­ing on Face­book that he had re­signed, Grif­fith told the T&T Guardian, “Peo­ple know this side of Gary Grif­fith—I do not re­treat. I do not re­sign.”

He al­so took is­sue with a re­port which sug­gest­ed he was “in a jam” con­cern­ing his re­cent con­tro­ver­sial state­ments on the Prime Min­is­ter fol­low­ing the Bay­side Tow­ers pool par­ty is­sue.

The ar­ti­cle stat­ed Gov­ern­ment will send a writ­ten com­plaint on Grif­fith’s state­ments to the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. The PSC was re­port­ed as meet­ing this week on Grif­fith’s con­duct and the T&T Guardian con­firmed the body is sched­uled to meet to­mor­row.

Ad­dress­ing this di­rect­ly, Grif­fith said, “This is a sen­sa­tion­al ar­ti­cle to politi­cise and un­der­mine the of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice on some­one’s be­half.”

Grif­fith dou­bled-down in de­fend­ing his re­cent state­ments where he’d sparred with Row­ley. Af­ter na­tion­al out­rage over the fact that no one was ar­rest­ed af­ter po­lice were called to deal with 40-plus youths at the Bay­side pool par­ty, Row­ley last Sat­ur­day called for fair law en­force­ment treat­ment on the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions.

Grif­fith, who’d felt the is­sue was be­ing made out to be over race, colour, pol­i­tics and re­li­gions, ac­cused Row­ley of be­ing a hyp­ocrite, draw­ing ref­er­ence to dis­re­gard for COVID pro­to­cols in the re­cent Gen­er­al Elec­tion cam­paign. He’d called for Row­ley to re­tract his state­ment.

But Row­ley called a meet­ing with Grif­fith on Mon­day and the sub­se­quent ar­ti­cle quot­ing Gov­ern­ment sources com­plained about Grif­fith’s state­ments and not­ed re­course to the PSC.

On­ly two weeks ago, Grif­fith had dis­played high marks he’d re­ceived from the PSC in his re­cent job re­view. The com­mis­sion hires, pro­motes and dis­ci­plines with­in the po­lice ser­vice, in­clud­ing the com­mis­sion­er.

Yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said, “I don’t know where they got that (ar­ti­cle) from.”

He queried a “... se­nior gov­ern­ment source be­ing so in­stru­men­tal to know gov­ern­ment will send a re­port to the PSC of a mat­ter of na­tion­al in­ter­est.”

“What val­ue was it to in­form the coun­try in such a clan­des­tine way that a re­port was be­ing sent to the PSC? If they want to send a re­port, send it - but do­ing it in this way un­der­mines the com­mis­sion­er’s of­fice,” Grif­fith said.

“The PSC meets on a reg­u­lar ba­sis and on most oc­ca­sions dis­cus­sions in­volve ac­tiv­i­ties/ac­tions by the po­lice and com­mis­sion­er... so ob­vi­ous­ly this (cur­rent) mat­ter is some­thing they’d dis­cuss, it will be no ex­tra­or­di­nary mat­ter as it’s a mat­ter of na­tion­al con­cern.”

He added, “One thing Gary Grif­fith is not, is a cow­ard and he won’t hide be­hind any­one to speak on his be­half.”

Asked if he felt the sit­u­a­tion might cur­tail ex­ten­sion of his con­tract next Au­gust, Grif­fith said, “Not at all - look at my an­nu­al re­view. No com­mis­sion­er has ever re­ceived such a high rank­ing.”

On if he still felt Row­ley was a “hyp­ocrite,” Grif­fith said, “The Prime Min­is­ter and I spoke. This is wa­ter un­der the bridge, we’ve moved on. Re­minder how­ev­er: the po­lice ser­vice is an in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tion, we’re not sum­moned by any politi­cian. I was in­vit­ed to Mon­day’s meet­ing.”

Say­ing the cur­rent PSC is very pro­fes­sion­al, Grif­fith said if he has to meet the body on the mat­ter, “.... There’s noth­ing for me to ac­count on what hap­pened. For decades peo­ple thought po­lice re­port­ed to politi­cians, but the Po­lice Ser­vice is an in­de­pen­dent body.”

“I’ll go for­ward to re­veal what I did was to clar­i­fy the mis­con­cep­tion caused by some based on com­ments that the po­lice weren’t do­ing their job and were be­ing se­lec­tive. That’s a damn­ing al­le­ga­tion against the po­lice when facts showed all we were do­ing was ad­her­ing to and en­forc­ing the law and not breach­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of peo­ple —be­ing un­able to ar­rest per­sons in pri­vate com­plex­es.”

Grif­fith in­sist­ed the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions ap­plied to be­ing in pub­lic and not for pri­vate prop­er­ty. He de­fend­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, who’s come un­der fire on the reg­u­la­tions.

“The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was clear on what I said when he al­so said the po­lice op­er­at­ed in dozens of mat­ters when large gath­er­ings were held in pri­vate prop­er­ty - we dis­persed peo­ple. But those oth­er in­ci­dents were nev­er a con­cern,” he said.

“The on­ly rea­son the re­ac­tion to this (Bay­side) mat­ter oc­curred was due to skin com­plex­ion et cetera. No law was bro­ken no-one was ar­rest­ed. But de­spite that, peo­ple want­ed per­sons to be ar­rest­ed due to skin com­plex­ion.

“How­ev­er, I can­not have po­lice op­er­ate in this man­ner. It’s in­ap­pro­pri­ate for peo­ple to say po­lice must ar­rest oth­ers in pri­vate prop­er­ties when we lack au­thor­i­ty to do so—I won’t have the po­lice breach cit­i­zens’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.”