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Sunday, May 4, 2025

New plot uncovered to kill Griffith

by

Mark Bassant
2270 days ago
20190214
Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith arrives at yesterday media briefing at the Police Administration Building, Edward and Sackville Streets, Port-of-Spain.

Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith arrives at yesterday media briefing at the Police Administration Building, Edward and Sackville Streets, Port-of-Spain.

NICOLE DRAYTON

A new plot has been un­cov­ered to as­sas­si­nate Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith by two in­car­cer­at­ed gang lead­ers and one of their as­so­ciates.

In­tel­li­gence sources say the con­tract to kill was con­nect­ed to the hu­man traf­fick­ing bust which oc­curred last Wednes­day.

The in­for­ma­tion is com­piled in a con­fi­den­tial re­port pre­pared by the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team on Feb­ru­ary 8.

A copy of the re­port which has been ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia names of the ma­jor play­ers in the plot and their plan to take out the Com­mis­sion­er with help of shoot­ers based in the Laven­tille area.

One high-rank­ing in­tel­li­gence source told Guardian Me­dia they are cer­tain the threat is linked to the hu­man traf­fick­ing bust that took place on Feb­ru­ary 6, in which 19 young Span­ish-speak­ing girls were res­cued in West Trinidad and at a Chi­nese restau­rant on Ari­api­ta Av­enue.

Some 18 sus­pects were ar­rest­ed and re­main in cus­tody as po­lice con­tin­ue to piece to­geth­er this in­tri­cate crim­i­nal net­work.

Mere hours af­ter the sex traf­fick­ing bust, a con­fi­den­tial in­for­mant reached out to the mem­bers of SORT spilling the beans about the plot and why the Com­mis­sion­er was be­ing tar­get­ed.

“Seems based on our in­for­ma­tion these per­sons reached out to these gang lead­ers in jail to en­sure that the job to pass out the Com­mis­sion­er was done,” said a high-rank­ing in­tel­li­gence source.

An­oth­er re­li­able source said, “Be­cause we in­ter­rupt­ed their crim­i­nal en­ter­prise and they now want to si­lence the Com­mis­sion­er. We’re talk­ing about pow­er­ful and af­flu­ent peo­ple here,” he said.

The in­for­ma­tion, the re­port stat­ed, was ex­tract­ed from a con­fi­den­tial in­for­mant with in­ti­mate de­tails about the plot and was ti­tled “Spe­cial re­port: plot to as­sas­si­nate the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Grade C,2”.

In­tel­li­gence sources who spoke to Guardian Me­dia on the con­di­tion of strict anonymi­ty con­firmed that the re­port was for­ward­ed to Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith for his pe­rusal the same day it was pre­pared.

Guardian Me­dia spoke to Grif­fith about the con­fi­den­tial re­port via tele­phone min­utes af­ter he held a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day to in­form the pub­lic about the on­go­ing po­lice ex­er­cis­es and their crack­down on gang ac­tiv­i­ties and re­put­ed gang mem­bers.

“I am aware there has been yet an­oth­er plan for an as­sas­si­na­tion at­tempt on me and I ex­pect this will con­tin­ue. The more that I de­cide to peg back crim­i­nal el­e­ments the more they will be frus­trat­ed. As I stat­ed be­fore this is a mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar in­dus­try there are many toes I am step­ping on. Toes may vary from those wear­ing their pants one foot off from their waist­line to those with a Hugo Boss suit. It is ir­rel­e­vant to me. I will do what is re­quired. I have my job to do they have theirs. If they feel theirs is to take me out it is to­tal­ly ir­rel­e­vant to me they could try if they want, it would be an ef­fort in fu­til­i­ty,” de­clared Grif­fith.

This re­port came al­most three months af­ter a Spe­cial Branch re­port in No­vem­ber last year that Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly on which re­vealed that the Mus­lim and Ras­ta City gangs were plan­ning to take out Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith.

Due to the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the in­for­ma­tion, Guardian Me­dia felt it was in the best in­ter­est to on­ly use the first ini­tial of the in­di­vid­u­als named in the re­port.

The re­port stat­ed that an in­car­cer­at­ed Mus­lim gang leader had or­dered the hit from in­side the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison and had joined forces with a Mara­bel­la gang leader who is al­so be­hind bars at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison to ex­e­cute this hit.

The re­port re­vealed that the re­put­ed Mara­bel­la gang leader had re­cruit­ed an as­so­ciate “J” al­so from Mara­bel­la to re­cruit shoot­ers from Laven­tille for the as­sas­si­na­tion. The as­so­ciate, the re­port states has a sis­ter who re­sides in the Laven­tille area that is sus­pect­ed of fal­si­fy­ing deeds and birth cer­tifi­cates for the pur­pose of se­cur­ing bail for de­tained peo­ple and with her help, he would re­cruit the shoot­ers for the job from that area.

Au­thor­i­ties say they were al­so aware that the in­car­cer­at­ed Mara­bel­la gang leader was us­ing a Dig­i­cel cell­phone in prison to com­mu­ni­cate with his cronies.

The re­port al­so lists com­ments some of the said in­di­vid­u­als who are in­volved in this plot to kill the Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith.

The SORT re­port stat­ed that the re­put­ed Mara­bel­la gang leader had been in a war for turf with his Mara­bel­la as­so­ciate, J, pri­or to his in­car­cer­a­tion.

How­ev­er, a Port-of-Spain gang leader (full name called) through his mu­tu­al as­so­ci­a­tion with both men was able to mend their re­la­tion­ship last year, the doc­u­ment said.

The SORT re­port made five se­cu­ri­ty sug­ges­tions (which Guardian Me­dia will keep con­fi­den­tial) on how to deal with this plot quick­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly with the hope of bring­ing the per­pe­tra­tors to jus­tice.


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