RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Re­tired Ap­peal Court Judge Jus­tice Stan­ley John is stand­ing by his much-pub­li­cised re­port in which he de­scribed the is­suance of firearm users’ li­cens­es (FUL) by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) as “a thriv­ing well-oiled white-col­lar crim­i­nal en­ter­prise.”

Jus­tice John spoke ex­clu­sive­ly to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, af­ter ques­tions were sent ask­ing for a com­ment on the al­le­ga­tions made by for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith.

Grif­fith al­leged that the re­tired judge had tipped off two peo­ple in­volved in the FUL scan­dal when he sent his re­port to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil in con­tra­ven­tion of Sec­tion 51 of the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act.

Jus­tice John said his re­port was sub­mit­ted to the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion which gave him the man­date to in­ves­ti­gate.

Asked to clar­i­fy whether he spoke to Grif­fith about his al­leged breach of the law, Jus­tice John stood by his find­ings say­ing, “My state­ment em­anat­ed from the Com­mis­sion­er’s state­ment to me.”

In his re­port, Jus­tice John wrote, “(Grif­fith’s) own ex­pla­na­tion of his in­volve­ment in the process, in my opin­ion…was in breach of the law as set out in Sec­tion 16 of the Firearms Act....” 

Asked whether he had con­tact­ed Grif­fith about the al­le­ga­tion of law­break­ing and what re­sponse Grif­fith gave, Jus­tice John re­spond­ed, “ It was not nec­es­sary to con­tact him.”

In light of a let­ter pro­vid­ed by Grif­fith and signed by Jus­tice John which stat­ed that Grif­fith was not un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Guardian Me­dia en­quired whether John’s man­date had changed dur­ing the course of his en­quiry.

He re­spond­ed, “My man­date was to in­quire in­to al­le­ga­tions of cor­rupt prac­tices sur­round­ing the is­suance of FULs. The man­date was nev­er al­tered.”

Grif­fith, who is seek­ing le­gal re­dress fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of the re­port, told Guardian Me­dia that he sub­mit­ted to John the name of a Min­is­ter, who cur­rent­ly sits on the said Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, and who had been in re­ceipt of a 5.56 firearm with­out pay­ment to the deal­er.”

“By sub­mit­ting this re­port to the same Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil up­on which the Min­is­ter sits, has es­sen­tial­ly ‘tipped’ off per­sons in con­tra­ven­tion of Sec­tion 51 of the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act,” Grif­fith re­vealed.

Guardian Me­dia asked John why he sent the re­port to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil when he knew two peo­ple on the NSC had been im­pli­cat­ed in the re­port. 

How­ev­er, Jus­tice John said, “copies of the re­port were hand­ed over to the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion as the client.”

Pressed fur­ther, Jus­tice John re­spond­ed, “I have told you what I did with the re­port. My client was the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.”

Last week Grif­fith told Guardian Me­dia he in­tends to pur­sue le­gal re­dress for the un­der­tak­ing of a ju­di­cial re­view in­to Jus­tice John’s re­port.

Grif­fith said the prin­ci­ples of nat­ur­al jus­tice had been ig­nored, not­ing he was not giv­en the “cour­tesy of a re­sponse, de­fence, nor copy of the said re­port.”

John, in his re­port, rec­om­mend­ed a po­lice probe in­to sev­er­al mat­ters raised dur­ing his in­ves­ti­ga­tion not­ing that the er­rant per­sons should be brought to jus­tice and not be al­lowed to go free.