Griffith rejects TTPS expansion plan

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is crit­i­cis­ing Gov­ern­ment plans to in­crease the strength of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice from 7,884 of­fi­cers to 10,200 of­fi­cers over five years, ar­gu­ing that the coun­try needs im­proved polic­ing sys­tems and ac­count­abil­i­ty rather than more per­son­nel.

The pro­posed ex­pan­sion was an­nounced yes­ter­day by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der dur­ing a state­ment in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, where he said the phased re­cruit­ment pro­gramme would sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­prove the op­er­a­tional ef­fec­tive­ness of the TTPS.

Re­spond­ing in a state­ment post­ed on so­cial me­dia, Grif­fith de­scribed the pro­pos­al as “not a se­ri­ous crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy” and ar­gued that in­creas­ing po­lice num­bers was of­ten used when those in charge could not de­liv­er re­sults.

He said the ap­proach of re­quest­ing more man­pow­er, equip­ment and fund­ing with­out ad­dress­ing struc­tur­al prob­lems had pre­vi­ous­ly been op­posed by both him­self and for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs.

Grif­fith urged the Gov­ern­ment to seek in­de­pen­dent in­ter­na­tion­al guid­ance from qual­i­fied law en­force­ment ex­perts, in­clud­ing through the British High Com­mis­sion and the Unit­ed States Em­bassy.

Ac­cord­ing to Grif­fith, the key prob­lems af­fect­ing the TTPS in­volve lead­er­ship, ac­count­abil­i­ty, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, vis­i­bil­i­ty, re­sponse times, train­ing, in­tegri­ty and pub­lic trust.

He ar­gued that Trinidad and To­ba­go al­ready has one of the high­est po­lice-to-pop­u­la­tion ra­tios in the world and com­pared the TTPS with the New York Po­lice De­part­ment.

Grif­fith said New York City has ap­prox­i­mate­ly 35,000 po­lice of­fi­cers serv­ing more than 8.5 mil­lion peo­ple dai­ly, adding that based on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pro­posed ra­tio, the NYPD would re­quire near­ly 57,000 of­fi­cers.

“This com­par­i­son alone ex­pos­es the flaw in the think­ing. The an­swer is not quan­ti­ty. The an­swer is qual­i­ty,” Grif­fith said.

He point­ed to the 2018 to 2021 pe­ri­od as an ex­am­ple of what he de­scribed as “21st-cen­tu­ry polic­ing,” say­ing pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence in the po­lice reached about 60 per cent dur­ing that time.

Grif­fith said mea­sures in­tro­duced then in­clud­ed high-vis­i­bil­i­ty pa­trols, GPS track­ing for po­lice ve­hi­cles, im­proved com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems, stricter com­mand ac­count­abil­i­ty and on­line re­port­ing sys­tems de­signed to re­duce sta­tion du­ties and place more of­fi­cers on the streets.

He al­so re­ferred to ini­tia­tives in­tro­duced un­der Gibbs, in­clud­ing the Com­mu­ni­ty Com­fort Pa­trol, Emer­gency Re­sponse Pa­trol and Rapid Re­sponse Unit.

Grif­fith warned that in­creas­ing the size of the TTPS with­out stronger ac­count­abil­i­ty sys­tems could weak­en the or­gan­i­sa­tion by mak­ing su­per­vi­sion more dif­fi­cult and in­creas­ing the risk of un­qual­i­fied or poor­ly trained of­fi­cers en­ter­ing the ser­vice.

He ques­tioned whether tax­pay­ers would see mea­sur­able im­prove­ments in polic­ing if the State spent an ad­di­tion­al $500 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly to sup­port the ex­pand­ed po­lice ser­vice.

“More of­fi­cers sit­ting in sta­tions will not re­duce crime. More of­fi­cers with­out per­for­mance met­rics will not im­prove re­sponse times,” Grif­fith said.

He ar­gued that the mon­ey could in­stead be used to im­prove oth­er branch­es of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem, in­clud­ing the Prison Ser­vice, Cus­toms and Im­mi­gra­tion, the Fire Ser­vice, De­fence Force, Po­lice Ma­rine Branch and Air Guard.

Grif­fith said if au­thor­i­ties re­ject­ed his po­si­tion, in­de­pen­dent in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts should as­sess whether the cur­rent size of the TTPS was al­ready suf­fi­cient.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go does not need a bloat­ed Po­lice Ser­vice. It needs a dis­ci­plined, ac­count­able, vis­i­ble, re­spon­sive, and in­tel­li­gence-led Po­lice Ser­vice. Any­thing less is not re­form,” he added.