Head of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team, Supt Roger Alexan­der, is deny­ing ru­mours that the TT Po­lice Ser­vice plans to dis­band SORT and sev­er­al oth­er suc­cess­ful crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tives put in place by for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said, “No in­struc­tions or in­for­ma­tion came to me with re­spect to (the dis­band­ing of SORT). Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Mc­Don­ald) Ja­cob and the ex­ec­u­tive, we have spo­ken and that is not their in­ten­tion at this time.”

Yes­ter­day, for­mer CoP Gary Grif­fith said peo­ple have been reach­ing out to him with com­plaints about a ma­jor reshuf­fling of spe­cial­ist units with­in the TTPS and the dis­man­tling of SORT, which he set up with spe­cial­ly trained of­fi­cers.

Tak­ing to so­cial me­dia, Grif­fith said he would re­serve com­ments on the de­vel­op­ments. How­ev­er, he di­vulged the con­cerns which were brought to him.

“As many would know, SORT was my brain­child so it was un­der­stand­able that peo­ple felt the need to con­tact me. Whilst re­serv­ing per­son­al comm,” Grif­fith wrote.

He not­ed that peo­ple have asked why the Coast Guard’s Spe­cial Naval Unit hasn’t been shut down be­cause one of their own killed a po­lice­man on Sun­day.

“This per­son al­so ques­tioned why they tar­get­ed SORT since they were on­ly re­spon­si­ble for about ten per cent of all po­lice killings when oth­er units have been five times more in­volved, even though SORT was the front­line unit in armed con­fronta­tions with crim­i­nal el­e­ments,” Grif­fith added.

“Still an­oth­er asked if we can ex­pect the Prime Min­is­ter to dis­man­tle the Cab­i­net be­cause of Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald’s charges, and then went on to sug­gest that there is a heavy po­lit­i­cal price to pay for do­ing this giv­en what hap­pened when SAUTT was dis­man­tled years ago.

“They went on to say ‘peo­ple who con­demned when the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion dis­man­tled SAUTT are now silent or even in sup­port of this, which shows their hypocrisy.’”

Grif­fith said the con­cerned peo­ple who reached out to him were wor­ried about crime es­ca­lat­ing with the dis­band­ing of an­ti-crime op­er­a­tives.

 The for­mer CoP al­so said ques­tions arose about the pow­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob ap­pears to be wield­ing as DCP and in­ter­im TTPS head. 

“That as an ac­count­ing of­fi­cer and not an Act­ing CoP or CoP, he shouldn’t be mak­ing such sweep­ing changes, es­pe­cial­ly in light that we have a new Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion who the­o­ret­i­cal­ly could send a mer­it list to Par­lia­ment so that a new Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice could be ap­point­ed in less than a week. Even when we had a sub­stan­tive Com­mis­sion­er or Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er, nev­er be­fore did they make such changes as we are see­ing Ja­cob is mak­ing now,” Grif­fith wrote.

Sev­er­al at­tempts were made to con­tact DCP Ja­cob yes­ter­day but there was no re­sponse.

How­ev­er, DCP Joanne Archie said the TTPS will re­spond to the al­le­ga­tions “in due course.”

“Please note that this is not en­tire­ly true, hence we would make a state­ment on the is­sue,” she said via What­sapp.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds could not be reached for com­ment.