CoP defends FUL background checks

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro is urg­ing ap­pli­cants for firearm user’s li­cences (FULs) to be pa­tient as the nec­es­sary back­ground checks, in­ves­ti­ga­tions and process­es are com­plet­ed, not­ing that while they are free to ap­ply for a per­mit, they are not en­ti­tled to au­to­mat­i­cal­ly re­ceive one.

Gue­var­ro made the re­marks while re­spond­ing to ques­tions from par­tic­i­pants dur­ing the open floor ses­sion at Con­ver­sa­tions with the Com­mis­sion­er, a fo­rum host­ed by the T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce yes­ter­day.

He not­ed that mech­a­nisms were struc­tured to en­sure the FULs were is­sued to peo­ple who were in need of them the most, while al­so ob­serv­ing se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols to min­imise the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the weapons be­ing mis­used.

Re­fer­ring to an ap­pli­ca­tion he re­ceived last month from a farmer who claimed he need­ed an FUL to de­stroy pests on his par­cel of agri­cul­tur­al land, Gue­var­ro said this ap­pli­ca­tion was de­nied when a site vis­it by the in­ves­ti­ga­tor re­vealed the man’s prop­er­ty con­sist­ed of five acres of bam­boo. He said he ques­tioned what type of pests would re­quire a firearm in such a sce­nario.

Gue­var­ro said while some ap­pli­ca­tions usu­al­ly took as lit­tle as sev­en months to process be­fore an FUL was grant­ed, oth­ers took longer, de­pend­ing on how quick­ly ap­pli­cants pro­vid­ed the re­quired doc­u­ments.

How­ev­er, he in­sist­ed that this was an im­por­tant part of the FUL ap­proval process, re­fer­ring to a sit­u­a­tion in the re­cent past where weapons were pro­vid­ed seem­ing­ly au­to­mat­i­cal­ly with lit­tle over­sight.

With­out re­fer­ring to any par­tic­u­lar po­lice com­mis­sion­er, Gue­var­ro said even per­sons who al­ready had per­mits for one gun were still sub­ject to back­ground checks and in­ves­ti­ga­tions if they ap­plied for more.

“Not be­cause you have an FUL al­ready means we give you a gun you know ... That was one of the is­sues in one of the au­dit re­ports, that gun was shar­ing like nuts! That is crazi­ness,” he said.

“A man make an ap­pli­ca­tion, in sev­en months’ time he get 12 guns with­out an in­ves­ti­ga­tion... I telling you, I don’t hold wa­ter in my mouth to talk the truth.

“No in­ves­ti­ga­tion in that file ... so he just ap­ply­ing and get­ting ap­proval. What is the rea­son you want 12 guns? You’re Ram­bo?”

Gue­var­ro re­ferred to ear­li­er com­ments where he ap­pealed to the pub­lic and ac­knowl­edged there was a back­log of FUL ap­pli­ca­tions, but urged peo­ple not to clog the sys­tem by ap­ply­ing for firearm per­mits un­less there was an ur­gent need for per­son­al pro­tec­tion.

Re­spond­ing to an in­ci­dent where an un­suc­cess­ful FUL ap­pli­cant post­ed his ap­pli­ca­tion form on so­cial me­dia, Gue­var­ro said fac­tors con­sid­ered be­fore grant­i­ng a per­mit were whether the ap­pli­cant was in im­me­di­ate dan­ger, whether they were a vic­tim of crime, or if they were in­volved in mov­ing large sums of cash.

Gue­var­ro al­so re­port­ed that in a bid to main­tain the in­tegri­ty of the ap­proval process, the FUL per­mit sec­tion was re­moved from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing to an­oth­er lo­ca­tion. This, he said, should re­move the per­cep­tion that he was in­volved in any as­pect of the vet­ting process, adding that files on­ly ar­rived at his desk at the very last stage.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the CoP’s claims yes­ter­day, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith chal­lenged Gue­var­ro to go in­to fur­ther de­tails and re­veal the name of the per­son, who he claimed ac­quired 12 guns.

De­spite not be­ing ex­plic­it­ly men­tioned by Gue­var­ro, Grif­fith took is­sue with the CoP’s re­marks over the claims of min­i­mal reg­u­la­tion in the FUL ap­pli­ca­tion process pre­vi­ous­ly, con­tend­ing that it was not un­usu­al for firearms train­ers to have more than one weapon in their pos­ses­sion.

“Call the name of the per­son who got it (the guns), be­cause there were over 20 to 25 peo­ple that had over ten firearms be­fore I was com­mis­sion­er of po­lice, but he didn’t have a prob­lem then and he was in the po­lice ser­vice for decades be­fore me.

“If some­one is a firearms train­er, he must have about 15 dif­fer­ent firearms; there will be oth­er own­ers who may be own­ers of a com­pa­ny with ten dif­fer­ent busi­ness­es and that per­son may need busi­ness­es for his se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers to have. Just by that com­ment made by that Com­mis­sion­er, it shows he is in­tim­i­dat­ed by my track record.”

Grif­fith al­so ques­tioned the ac­cu­ra­cy of the in­for­ma­tion con­tained in the Firearms Au­dit re­port.

Re­fer­ring to the gov­ern­ment’s en­thu­si­asm in in­tro­duc­ing stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion that would al­low home­own­ers to de­fend them­selves and oth­ers from crim­i­nals, even with lethal force, Grif­fith ac­cused Gue­var­ro of adopt­ing a stance that was in­con­sis­tent with the Gov­ern­ment.

“You can’t stand your ground with a pil­low,” Grif­fith said.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who, in the past, had raised con­cerns about the is­suance of FULs dur­ing Grif­fith’s tenure, but was un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.