Griffith challenges Guevarro over performance

For­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Gary Grif­fith has hit back at Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, chal­leng­ing his lead­er­ship and per­for­mance in a strong­ly word­ed state­ment.

Grif­fith re­spond­ed to re­marks at­trib­uted to Gue­var­ro that he [Grif­fith] “was nev­er a po­lice”, ques­tion­ing how the com­mis­sion­er as­sess­es his own per­for­mance in com­par­i­son.

“Yes Gue­var­ro, I ‘was nev­er a Po­lice’, so how does that make you feel, know­ing that what I achieved as CoP in a month, you have not been able to ac­com­plish in year?” Grif­fith said.

He ac­cused the com­mis­sion­er of at­tempt­ing to side­line per­for­mance and ac­com­plish­ment, adding that lead­er­ship, not back­ground, de­ter­mines ef­fec­tive­ness.

“To be­gin with, how does that make you feel to know that even though I was ‘not a po­lice’, I was able to get more points in every as­sess­ment than every se­nior of­fi­cer who ap­plied for the post, and on two oc­ca­sions? It shows that ‘be­ing a po­lice’ is not the re­quire­ment, as you fool­ish­ly stat­ed. It is about lead­er­ship,” he said.

Grif­fith al­so called on Gue­var­ro to dis­close his own pro­mo­tion as­sess­ment re­sults pri­or to his ap­point­ment as com­mis­sion­er.

“You how­ev­er, based on as­sess­ments, should show us the last re­sults of your pro­mo­tion ex­ams, pri­or to your ap­point­ment as COP. You can­not ex­pect to be ac­cept­ed at the high­est lev­el in an or­ga­ni­za­tion, if you can­not top as­sess­ments for pro­mo­tions at a mid­dle man­age­ment lev­el in the same or­ga­ni­za­tion,” he said.

The for­mer CoP out­lined sev­er­al ini­tia­tives un­der­tak­en dur­ing his tenure, in­clud­ing ef­forts to re­duce cor­rup­tion with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, which he said elim­i­nat­ed more than $100 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly in over­time abuse.

“I cleaned up the cor­rup­tion and bad prac­tices in the TTPS, from elim­i­nat­ing over $100 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly in over­time cor­rup­tion, some­thing which has recom­menced on my de­par­ture,” Grif­fith said.

He added that he in­tro­duced mea­sures to pre­vent the mis­use of po­lice ve­hi­cles, in­clud­ing GPS track­ing, which he claimed has since been re­moved.

Grif­fith al­so point­ed to the es­tab­lish­ment of a Gen­der Based Vi­o­lence Unit, which he said ad­dressed abuse in­volv­ing women, chil­dren and the el­der­ly.

“I formed a Gen­der Based Vi­o­lence Unit to deal with abuse of women, chil­dren and el­der­ly… When last has any­one heard about the Gen­der Based Vi­o­lence Unit?” he said.

Grif­fith said he is now di­rect­ly chal­leng­ing Gue­var­ro on lead­er­ship and per­for­mance.

The ex­change fol­lows re­cent com­ments by Gue­var­ro in which he re­ject­ed ac­cu­sa­tions of po­lit­i­cal bias and de­fend­ed his pro­fes­sion­al neu­tral­i­ty.

“I have nev­er vot­ed in any elec­tion. I am proud of my apo­lit­i­cal sta­tus. I have no de­sire for po­lit­i­cal of­fice, nor have I ever held mem­ber­ship in any po­lit­i­cal par­ty. My loy­al­ty is to the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, not to any po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion, nor do I har­bour any am­bi­tion of en­ter­ing pol­i­tics,” Gue­var­ro had said.

Gue­var­ro al­so al­leged that Grif­fith’s tenure left the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice bur­dened by hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in debt and ad­min­is­tra­tive dis­ar­ray, cit­ing a Min­istry of Fi­nance au­dit cov­er­ing 2017 to 2021.

He point­ed to is­sues with­in the firearms per­mit unit and le­gal judg­ments which he said have stymied in­ter­nal pro­mo­tions.

“All of these were con­se­quences of his fail­ure to prop­er­ly un­der­stand and ex­e­cute the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the of­fice he held. But then again, he was nev­er a po­lice,” Gue­var­ro said.