Griffith: Alexander must serve all citizens

CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith has crit­i­cised Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, ac­cus­ing him of pri­ori­tis­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice over the wider pub­lic and mak­ing state­ments that are “bor­der­ing on be­ing dan­ger­ous and fright­ful”.

In a me­dia re­lease, Grif­fith said Alexan­der’s re­cent com­ments have caused con­cern, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the eve of Car­ni­val, when cit­i­zens should fo­cus on the cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits of the fes­ti­val rather than pol­i­tics and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty dis­putes.

Grif­fith point­ed to what he de­scribed as a con­tra­dic­tion with­in the Gov­ern­ment over the host­ing of events in the west­ern penin­su­la. He said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar sup­port­ed the de­ci­sion to host events there—a po­si­tion en­dorsed by De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge—but which he said con­flict­ed with Alexan­der’s stance.

He main­tained that cit­i­zens, re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion, should sup­port the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure its suc­cess, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en Car­ni­val’s eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al im­por­tance. How­ev­er, he ar­gued that Alexan­der must recog­nise his ex­pand­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as a min­is­ter.

Grif­fith said over the past three weeks Alexan­der made four con­tro­ver­sial com­ments which he char­ac­terised as il­log­i­cal, emo­tion­al and bi­ased in favour of the Po­lice. Draw­ing com­par­isons to his own tenure as se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and lat­er as Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, Grif­fith said he de­fend­ed of­fi­cers when nec­es­sary but al­so took dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion where of­fi­cers breached Stand­ing Or­ders or the law. He claimed such ac­tions con­tributed to pub­lic con­fi­dence in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice reach­ing al­most 60 per cent.

On the is­sue of body cam­eras, Grif­fith said Alexan­der sig­nalled they were not a pri­or­i­ty, plac­ing greater im­por­tance on ar­moured ve­hi­cles. He al­so re­ject­ed Alexan­der’s as­ser­tion that body cam­era footage could not be viewed by the pub­lic, de­scrib­ing that claim as in­cor­rect.

Grif­fith fur­ther crit­i­cised Alexan­der’s re­port­ed pro­pos­al to crim­i­nalise cit­i­zens who record po­lice of­fi­cers on per­son­al de­vices and pub­lish the footage. He said such a mea­sure would af­fect al­most every cit­i­zen and ar­gued that the min­is­ter made the com­ment with­out con­sul­ta­tion with the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil or Cab­i­net.

He al­so ob­ject­ed to Alexan­der’s com­ments on po­lice in­ves­ti­gat­ing po­lice, say­ing com­par­isons with bod­ies such as the TTUTA and LATT were mis­placed. Grif­fith ar­gued that al­low­ing po­lice alone to in­ves­ti­gate po­lice could cre­ate the per­cep­tion of of­fi­cers cov­er­ing for one an­oth­er and de­fend­ed the au­thor­i­ty of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty to in­ves­ti­gate and lay charges where nec­es­sary.

Turn­ing to traf­fic con­ges­tion dur­ing a re­cent fete in Ch­aguara­mas, Grif­fith ac­cused Alexan­der of mak­ing a “knee-jerk” re­sponse by blam­ing the de­ci­sion to host events there rather than ex­am­in­ing po­lice traf­fic man­age­ment. He said larg­er events had pre­vi­ous­ly tak­en place in Ch­aguara­mas with­out sim­i­lar con­ges­tion.

Grif­fith al­leged that po­lice es­cort ser­vices for pa­trons, cou­pled with the re­moval of GPS mon­i­tor­ing on po­lice ve­hi­cles, con­tributed to traf­fic is­sues. He again said Alexan­der made com­ments on the mat­ter with­out con­sult­ing the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil or Cab­i­net.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that po­lit­i­cal sup­port­ers may in­ter­pret his crit­i­cism along par­ty lines, Grif­fith said even the Prime Min­is­ter’s po­si­tion dif­fered from Alexan­der’s and de­scribed her view as cor­rect.

He con­clud­ed by urg­ing Alexan­der to recog­nise that his role is to ad­dress the se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns of all cit­i­zens, not sole­ly to de­fend po­lice of­fi­cers.