Trinidad Top Cop chides justice system, politicians over crime fight

(Trinidad Guardian) Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith be­lieves that the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and politi­cians who con­tin­ue to give crim­i­nal gangs state con­tracts are con­tribut­ing to the coun­try’s grow­ing mur­der rate and it must stop.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day as the first month of 2020 end­ed with a mur­der count of 45, Grif­fith lament­ed that “it is im­pos­si­ble to win the war on crime when the crim­i­nals have the scales of jus­tice tilt­ed to­wards them.”

Grif­fith said the po­lice con­tin­ue to do their job, “we are try­ing to po­lice a war zone and we are ap­pre­hend­ing the en­e­mies of the State and then be­ing told they must get bail.”

Ac­cord­ing to Grif­fith, 323 per­sons were ar­rest­ed in the last three years by the po­lice for pos­ses­sion of il­le­gal weapons and they were giv­en bail on the first hear­ing and hun­dreds of oth­ers were giv­en bail af­ter.

“Our re­ports are that there are more than 800 shoot­ers. Shoot­ers are those gang mem­bers who con­tribute to the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the homi­cides in this coun­try. We have been able to suc­cess­ful­ly ap­pre­hend half of the per­sons who have been in­stru­men­tal in com­mitt­ing the ma­jor­i­ty of homi­cides. It means if our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem was ef­fec­tive, half of the homi­cides could have been cut, just like that,” Grif­fith said.

He is of the view that “had we put these in­di­vid­u­als where they be­long, the one point three mil­lion plus law abid­ing cit­i­zens would have had a bet­ter way of life. The needs of the many has to out­weigh the needs of the few crim­i­nal el­e­ments,” Grif­fith in­sist­ed.

Not­ing that in Bar­ba­dos like many coun­tries around the world, there are strict laws, “if you are found with a firearm you are giv­en no bail for 24 months,” Grif­fith lament­ed that here in Trinidad and To­ba­go those found with il­le­gal weapons get bail, “you can­not win a war like that,” he warned.

Grif­fith be­lieves that the grow­ing spate of mur­ders is part of the “so­cial de­cay” in the coun­try, “this is some­thing that did not hap­pen overnight, we did not move from 100- plus to 500- plus mur­ders overnight. It was over a decade and a half of us ac­cept­ing wrong-do­ing and we have moved to a point where politi­cians start­ed re­fer­ring to crim­i­nal el­e­ments as com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, politi­cians fa­cil­i­tat­ing and so­cial­is­ing and ac­com­mo­dat­ing crim­i­nal el­e­ments.”

Be­cause of Life Sport alone, he said, “sev­en­ty peo­ple were killed.” Now Grif­fith said there are two re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions which are “vir­tu­al­ly run by gangs who are get­ting most of the con­tracts. So you have from so­ci­ety per­sons who hold pub­lic of­fice, per­sons in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem have all con­tributed to this.”

Grif­fith said the so­ci­etal de­cay of the coun­try is re­flect­ed when el­der­ly per­sons are held in cages and young girls be­come child pros­ti­tutes, or per­sons with­hold in­for­ma­tion from the po­lice to help them find the crim­i­nals, when com­mu­ni­ties burn tyres and protest be­cause the po­lice shoot some­one, but when a crim­i­nal shoots at the po­lice no one says any­thing.

“We reach so­cial de­cay when a man could be held with nine as­sault ri­fles and there are per­sons in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem who can say those are com­po­nents of a firearm and not a re­al firearm and that per­son should be giv­en bail, not un­der­stand­ing that the com­po­nents when as­sem­bled could kill over 500 peo­ple. That is the so­cial de­cay we have reached to,” he said.

He is of the view that in ad­di­tion to fight­ing a de­cay­ing so­cial sys­tem, he some­times feel as if they are al­so fight­ing the le­gal sys­tem, “there are peo­ple who are just ig­no­rant to un­der­stand­ing what is re­quired, they want us to fight a war but feel the rights of crim­i­nals must have prece­dence over the rights of law abid­ing cit­i­zens,” he said.

Grif­fith said play­ers in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem need to get on board in the fight against crime, “we caught 323 shoot­ers, we played our part, on­ly to hand them over to in­di­vid­u­als who just bring them back on the streets to kill again. Many of these per­sons who were held they came back out on the streets to do their job.”

“When per­sons are killed they blame the po­lice,” but Grif­fith said “our job is up un­til the ar­rest, if it is there is a flaw in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem don’t blame us. We have done our job by ar­rest­ing over half of the al­leged shoot­ers,” he said.

The top Cop said he will con­tin­ue “to fight and put pres­sure on the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to do their job, do what is right.”

De­spite voic­es of op­po­si­tion to what he is do­ing, Grif­fith said he in­tends to con­tin­ue to “fight for the law abid­ing cit­i­zens of this coun­try. I will be fought down, there are cer­tain el­e­ments who have their fangs with­in cer­tain in­sti­tu­tions and they will at­tack me with full force, be­cause crime pays.”

But he says the days are “num­bered” for the crim­i­nal el­e­ment. “Crime pays but even­tu­al­ly their pay­check is go­ing to bounce,” Grif­fith said.

Grif­fith is al­so urg­ing the coun­try to “stand up and put pres­sure on the few who con­tin­ue to sup­port, aid and abet crim­i­nal el­e­ments.”