Griffith blasts CoP over body cam contract claims

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

For­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is no longer pulling his punch­es re­gard­ing the per­for­mance of cur­rent Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, whom he has de­scribed as “des­per­ate,” “pet­ty” and “com­i­cal.”

This lat­est es­ca­la­tion comes as un­der­ly­ing ten­sions be­tween them heat up, over the non-use of body cam­eras that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) ac­quired dur­ing his tenure.

Tak­ing to so­cial me­dia as he blast­ed Gue­var­ro, who broke his si­lence re­gard­ing the ac­qui­si­tion and use of body cam­eras by the TTPS on Mon­day, Grif­fith said, “Be­cause of his ap­par­ent fear and ig­no­rance of tech­nol­o­gy, he does not un­der­stand that when you make a com­ment, it can be eas­i­ly ver­i­fied by any mem­ber of the pub­lic via on­line re­search, in a sim­i­lar man­ner to his claim that a radar de­signed to tar­get and in­ter­cept mis­siles could have de­tect­ed il­le­gal drugs in a swamp.”

In an au­dio mes­sage on Tues­day, Gue­var­ro chal­lenged Grif­fith to ac­count for con­tracts for 1,200 body cams which he (Gue­var­ro) said left the TTPS mil­lions of dol­lars in debt and with­out cam­eras to use. He said the first batch of 750 cam­eras were no longer op­er­a­tional af­ter the TTPS ter­mi­nat­ed the con­tract and the sec­ond batch of 250 cam­eras was ac­quired with­out a man­age­ment plat­form, which meant of­fi­cers could turn them off and delete footage. As such, he said the de­vices were deemed un­suit­able for op­er­a­tional de­ploy­ment.

Pick­ing apart Gue­var­ro’s claims that he (Grif­fith) left the TTPS in debt to the tune of mil­lions of dol­lars af­ter his tenure, and had im­prop­er­ly ac­quired 1,000 body cam­eras, Grif­fith de­fend­ed the de­ci­sions he made when oc­cu­pied the po­si­tion from Au­gust 2018 to Au­gust 2021.

Grif­fith in­sist­ed 1,200 body cam­eras were pro­cured at an ap­prox­i­mate cost of TT$3,000 each.

This, he said, was in com­par­i­son “to the ap­proval to pur­chase an ad­di­tion­al 3,000 body cam­eras at a cost of TT$8,000 per cam­era by a com­mis­sion­er af­ter me, which was over $15 mil­lion more in com­par­i­son.”

He added, “They (cam­eras pro­cured dur­ing Grif­fith’s tenure) were ful­ly op­er­a­tional, fit for front­line polic­ing, and ac­tive­ly used by of­fi­cers.”

Re­gard­ing Gue­var­ro’s con­tract claim, Grif­fith chal­lenged Gue­var­ro to back up his state­ments that “the ma­jor­i­ty of these cam­eras can no longer be used be­cause the TTPS ter­mi­nat­ed the con­tract.”

He said Gue­var­ro failed to ex­plain why it was ter­mi­nat­ed and, if so, why af­ter five years, no new con­tract was award­ed to any­one to con­tin­ue us­ing the cam­eras.

Grif­fith al­so ques­tioned why the hi­er­ar­chy of the TTPS was “mov­ing so slow­ly that it takes over five years to es­tab­lish a con­tract to use body cam­eras that were al­ready in their pos­ses­sion.”

He claimed the de­vices had been sup­plied by three es­tab­lished providers, in­clu­sive of TSTT.

On the point that po­lice of­fi­cers could switch off the de­vices and delete footage at their whim, which he la­belled as “ridicu­lous,” Grif­fith urged the pub­lic to go on­line and re­search it for them­selves.

“You will see that al­most 100% of body cam­eras used by po­lice of­fi­cers in North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope can be switched on and off; there­fore, his ex­cuse is pa­thet­ic and mis­lead­ing.”

Prov­ing that he was no longer play­ing nice, Grif­fith fur­ther crit­i­cised Gue­var­ro as he in­sist­ed, “To show how des­per­ate he is to make cheap ex­cus­es not to use body cam­eras, these same 1,200 cam­eras were be­ing used by the TTPS un­der my watch.

“An of­fi­cer would sign for the cam­era on com­mence­ment of du­ty and re­turn it at the end of their pa­trol, road­block, or op­er­a­tion. It was then checked to ver­i­fy that the du­ra­tion of the pa­trol equat­ed with the length of the video record­ing. If there was a vari­ance and the of­fi­cer could not jus­ti­fy why it was turned off, they could be im­me­di­ate­ly sus­pend­ed, as there was a de­part­men­tal or­der mak­ing their use manda­to­ry. There­fore, his com­ment that the body cam­era can be turned off is ir­rel­e­vant.”

And on the is­sue of the qual­i­ty of the de­vices, he de­nied this, again en­cour­ag­ing the pub­lic to do their on­line re­search.

Ac­cus­ing Gue­var­ro of mis­lead­ing the pop­u­lace, he said, “This CoP seems des­per­ate to find any ex­cuse pos­si­ble not to use body cam­eras, and the me­dia and the pub­lic should ask why.”

Wad­ing in­to the pub­lic’s ire at Gue­var­ro over his han­dling of the fa­tal po­lice shoot­ing of Joshua Sama­roo on Jan­u­ary 20 in St Au­gus­tine, Grif­fith said, “While some might un­der­stand the des­per­a­tion un­der mass neg­a­tive pub­lic re­view, his words, spo­ken and un­spo­ken, sug­gest he is at­tempt­ing to blame oth­ers for his fail­ure to ad­dress the pub­lic’s con­cern.”