Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day list­ed col­lapsed an­ti-crime leg­is­la­tion, rogue po­lice of­fi­cers and lack of con­tin­u­ous poly­graph test­ing as the main polic­ing hur­dles to tack­le crime.

The Com­mis­sion­er and his team were be­fore the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) yes­ter­day scru­ti­nized on the po­lice abil­i­ty to strate­gi­cal­ly deal with or­ga­nized crime and gang ac­tiv­i­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to the Com­mis­sion­er be­cause of a lack of leg­is­la­tion gang ac­tiv­i­ty now ap­pears to be le­gal in this coun­try.

The Com­mis­sion­er al­so an­nounced that of­fi­cers will soon be in new uni­forms with spe­cial clips for body cam­eras and ra­dios and a belt with pep­per spray and tasers.

“The uni­form it­self, we got the ap­proval from Cab­i­net a week ago,” Grif­fith said.

Chair­man of the JSC, Fitzger­ald Hinds asked about po­lice of­fi­cers not show­ing up for court mat­ters, which usu­al­ly lead to these mat­ters be­ing thrown out of the court.

Re­cent­ly, in the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of An­drea Bhar­rat, it was re­vealed that one of the ac­cused, Joel Bal­con had some 70 cas­es and the ma­jor­i­ty was thrown out be­cause of a no-show by the charg­ing of­fi­cer.

“In what ways does lazi­ness, slop­pi­ness, un­pro­duc­tiv­i­ty af­fect the ef­fec­tive­ness of the po­lice ser­vice and what could be done to re­solve it?” Hinds asked.

Grif­fith said that case man­age­ment was key.

“That is why we would have seen in the last two years a 93 per cent re­duc­tion in po­lice of­fi­cers non-ap­pear­ance. There were no con­se­quences, no fol­low-up so po­lice of­fi­cers on many oc­ca­sions would not at­tend court. That is no longer the case,” Grif­fith said.

“I have a re­port of an at­tor­ney who boast­ed that he paid a po­lice of­fi­cer not to at­tend court and that is how se­ri­ous this gets,” he said.

Grif­fith al­so said the lack of an­ti-crime leg­is­la­tion makes it dif­fi­cult for the po­lice to con­trol the uptick in gang num­bers.

“It makes it vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble for us to do any­thing now be­cause it is le­gal to be a gang mem­ber. It is le­gal for any gang leader to con­tact a young per­son and ask them to join a gang,” Grif­fith said.

“We are one of the coun­tries where it is now le­git­i­mate to be a gang mem­ber,” he said.

Grif­fith de­tailed the num­ber of gangs in the coun­try and lament­ed that the gangs are re­cruit­ing young boys be­tween the ages 14 to 16 to act as armed look­outs.

“The to­tal mem­bers with­in the gangs with­in T&T, we have it as 1,056. We al­so have the break­down of gang mem­bers from some of the ma­jor gangs the Ras­ta City and Mus­lim Gangs, the Sixx and then we have num­ber of oth­er small­er gangs, the ABJ, the Mal­oney gangs,” he said.

“Young boys, es­pe­cial­ly young boys they be­come vul­ner­a­ble, eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble to these gang mem­bers and these gang lead­ers pull them in they put them some­times as a sen­try and they give them a firearm,” he said.

Grif­fith said that be­cause of the col­lapsed leg­is­la­tion in Par­lia­ment, it is eas­i­er now for gang lead­ers to op­er­ate.

“It is now le­gal to be a gang leader,” he said

“Be­cause of the leg­is­la­tion col­laps­ing, they now ad­ver­tise and have jer­seys to say they’re a gang mem­ber. There is no law against it,” he said.

Grif­fith al­so said that there is no ev­i­dence to link any of the gangs to a sin­gle big­ger play­er and the gangs op­er­ate in­de­pen­dent­ly.

The Com­mis­sion­er al­so con­firmed that rogue el­e­ments in the po­lice ser­vice al­so add to the dif­fi­cul­ties.

“Yes, it is very dif­fi­cult. Where we would have prop­er in­tel­li­gence com­ing to us from the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tion Fu­sion Cen­tre and more so the FIU and when we’re about to launch an op­er­a­tion to go af­ter in­di­vid­u­als, you would have po­lice of­fi­cers who would be cov­er­ing for drug blocks, hu­man traf­fick­ing, il­le­gal en­try of weapons, drugs in­to the coun­try. And they will tip off some of these op­er­a­tions we about to con­duct,” he said.

Vice-chair­man of the JSC, Sen­a­tor Paul Richards al­so asked about in­ter­na­tion­al gang el­e­ment in the coun­try. Grif­fith said that while there were no in­ter­na­tion­al gangs set up in T&T, some gang mem­bers from South Amer­i­ca added their own va­ri­ety of crime to the lo­cal gangs.

Grif­fith al­so said that the on­ly of­fi­cers poly­graphed on a reg­u­lar ba­sis were the mem­bers of SORT. All oth­er of­fi­cers are poly­graphed on­ly up­on en­ter­ing the po­lice ser­vice.

He is ask­ing for leg­is­la­tion that gives him the au­thor­i­ty to poly­graph of­fi­cers two years in­to the ser­vice.