Gail Alexan­der

There is now a war of “wimp” words be­tween na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds and for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Gary Grif­fith.

Hinds pelt­ed some ver­bal “big stones” in the Sen­ate on Tues­day - in­clud­ing at a for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er he called an “un­trust­wor­thy wimp!”

Hinds called no names.

But yes­ter­day, for­mer CoP Gary Grif­fith toss­ing it back, chal­lenged Hinds to make the “wimp” ac­cu­sa­tion out­side of the Par­lia­ment.

Hinds made his com­ments in con­clud­ing de­bate on the Firearms Amend­ment Bill 2022. Af­ter 11 hours of de­bate, it was passed in the Sen­ate in the ear­ly hours of yes­ter­day with amend­ments and mi­nus a con­tro­ver­sial clause.

Hinds al­so replied to, re­butted and railed at de­trac­tors in his clos­ing ad­dress. He said he’d heard some talk about “some Min­is­ter” and in field­ing ques­tions from a Par­lia­men­tary Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on il­le­gal firearms, “When I was giv­ing my tes­ti­mo­ny, one JSC mem­ber (the Oropouche East MP), I saw him on his cell phone get­ting mes­sage.”

“What he read to us in the Com­mit­tee, hav­ing read his phone, sug­gest­ed to me that it was a mes­sage I sent to a for­mer Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and who, like a wimp... un­trust­wor­thy wimp! And would share that with him and I’d hear that from time to time com­ing from the Op­po­si­tion, like if is some is­sue,” Hinds said.

“I’m a very ex­pe­ri­enced politi­cian, man and lawyer - I de­fend cas­es in the crim­i­nal courts for years from mur­der on to ob­scene lan­guage. I’m a very ex­pe­ri­enced man, I know good when I see it - and I know rub­bish when I see it.”

Hinds added, “I want to tell you this: I nev­er ask no­body to give no li­cence to none of my ‘part­ner or fam­i­ly’. Sev­er­al mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices - about four or five - in­di­cat­ed to me that they had ap­plied for firearms and the process was be­ing de­layed and I asked then-then Com­mis­sion­er to look in­to those ap­pli­ca­tions, al­ready made...

“I did that, know­ing full well at the be­gin­ning, dur­ing and at the end of the day, the whole­some dis­cre­tion was for the Com­mis­sion­er. Up to to­day as we speak, the li­cences were not yet grant­ed - yet I have to hear child­ish fol­ly from some of my friends on the oth­er side.”

Cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial yes­ter­day was the re­run of the JSC meet­ing where JSC mem­ber, UNC MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, asked Hinds about rec­om­mend­ing any­one for firearms and Hinds say­ing he hadn’t made “any rec­om­men­da­tion” to any CoP for any­body for firearm.

Hinds al­so threw re­marks fol­low­ing crit­i­cism from UNC Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts. Hinds said all his life he’d fought against crime.

“I nev­er call no shot on no foot­baller, farmer, gar­den­er or no dee­jay. I nev­er killed one per­son yet. In the course of my work as a po­lice of­fi­cer, I en­gaged in a cou­ple in­ci­dents but I nev­er killed any­one,” Hinds added.

“Not too long ago Life­s­port I’m aware, killed many young peo­ple in Mal­abar and East Trinidad and oth­er­wise, led to the killing of a high-lev­el per­son­al­i­ty in T&T. I’m not ever ac­cused of hav­ing se­cret meet­ings with gang lead­ers any­where in T&T, to the ex­tent that the po­lice have to fol­low me. Po­lice ent look­ing for me nowhere and I don’t pay crim­i­nals to go and deal with no­body!”

Hinds al­so said he’d re­ceived a list from law en­force­ment of peo­ple re­quir­ing homes and he sent the list to HDC last week, rec­om­mend­ing these of­fi­cers be con­sid­ered in the cir­cum­stances.

Gary: You are the wimp!

In a di­rect re­sponds to Hinds yes­ter­day, ex-Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith stat­ed, “Fitzger­ald Hinds ... You have the au­dac­i­ty t be call­ing any­body a wimp?

“You ever see your­self and your per­for­mance? You’ve been rat­ed as the worst politi­cian and NS Min­is­ter in T&T’s his­to­ry, every­body wants to get rid of you ex­cept your failed po­lit­i­cal leader! You want to com­pare my track record to yours, broth­er?!”

Grif­fith added list­ing his achieve­ments.

“You de­cid­ed to run like a lit­tle cow­ard when peo­ple kick wa­ter on you. That’s what you call a wimp.”

“Fitzger­ald Hinds, in­stead of hid­ing like a cow­ard in Par­lia­ment to call peo­ple names, why don’t you come out in pub­lic and say that if you name man. But you’re not. You know why? Be­cause you ... are the wimp!”

Grif­fith’s NTA al­so is­sued a state­ment say­ing he was vin­di­cat­ed on sev­er­al points in Tues­day’s de­bate.