RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Gary Grif­fith has con­firmed that he will reap­ply for the post of lead­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice.

Grif­fith said yes­ter­day his three-year term has been a tough one be­cause of per­son­al at­tacks on him and his fam­i­ly but promis­es to be stronger and bet­ter in his du­ties if re-ap­point­ed.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day which he said was his last in his cur­rent three-year term, Grif­fith said he did not take the job to gain friends.

“Whether you like me or don’t like me, I nev­er came to a job for friends. The day any­one does some­thing to please peo­ple or be pop­u­lar you will lose that cal­i­bre of lead­er­ship. It’s not try­ing to be pop­u­lar. It’s do­ing the right thing,” Grif­fith said.

“Yes there are polls where 80 per cent odd of the pop­u­la­tion has sup­port­ed me, and I wish to thank you. Some of the 20 per cent did not want change and some­times peo­ple ben­e­fit from chaos, as it pre­sent­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties. So by me stop­ping their ac­tions and busi­ness, ob­vi­ous­ly they will not be hap­py with me. Some of the haters mo­bi­lized and used a smear cam­paign, which was un­for­tu­nate. But to those haters, yes you have been a very big av­enue to help me make this de­ci­sion. So to all of the per­sons who hat­ed me, dis­cred­it­ed me, tried to at­tack my fam­i­ly, de­mo­nize me, as I stat­ed I am an in­de­pen­dent man. So af­ter speak­ing to my wife, she has giv­en me per­mis­sion, to state that I in­tend to reap­ply for the post of CoP,” he added.

Grif­fith al­so thanked the “hate the po­lice squad” and those who he said spent the last three years at­tack­ing him.

“It is be­cause of you, you have strength­ened me and my re­solve to reap­ply. Be­cause there has to be some good rea­son why it is you hate the Po­lice Ser­vice so much and it’s def­i­nite­ly not to the ben­e­fit of the coun­try. So to you who so bad­ly want to see me out. I wish to thank you in help­ing me make my de­ci­sion in reap­ply­ing.”

“If you could be so des­per­ate to at­tack me every few days and now even my fam­i­ly, I cer­tain­ly will not give you the op­por­tu­ni­ty. It shows there is a strong un­der­ground el­e­ment that wants me out and I will not give you the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­stroy the coun­try. My fam­i­ly is def­i­nite­ly made of stern­er stuff,” Grif­fith said.

Grif­fith even en­cour­aged the so­cial me­dia ad­vi­sors to ap­ply for the CoP po­si­tion giv­en the fact that they were out­spo­ken enough to say what he ought or ought not to do.

“There are few at­tacked and de­mo­nized as I have been and I refuse to stay down, I refuse to sur­ren­der, I refuse to walk away. The same way I have de­cid­ed to con­tin­ue to of­fer my ser­vices to this coun­try. To those who hate me...your ha­tred to me and the po­lice is the fu­el that I use and I wish to thank you and to those who have been telling me for the last three years, what I can and can­not do, cause we did have so­cial me­dia ex­perts for the last three years. This is your chance. I ask you to ap­ply.”

Grif­fith was ap­point­ed Com­mis­sion­er on Fri­day 3 Au­gust 2018.