Griffith blames leadership failures for Carenage traffic chaos

Chester Sam­bra­no

For­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Gary Grif­fith has at­trib­uted the se­vere traf­fic con­ges­tion in and around Ch­aguara­mas fol­low­ing the “Stink n Dut­ty” fete to a lack of lead­er­ship, plan­ning and op­er­a­tional man­age­ment, rather than fail­ures by fete pro­mot­ers or rank-and-file po­lice of­fi­cers. Grif­fith said con­cerns raised by res­i­dents and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty were un­der­stand­able but ar­gued that many pa­trons re­port­ed see­ing few po­lice of­fi­cers sta­tioned at known bot­tle­neck ar­eas, along with an ap­par­ent ab­sence of se­nior su­per­vi­so­ry ranks di­rect­ing traf­fic dur­ing crit­i­cal pe­ri­ods.

He added that en­force­ment ap­peared to dis­si­pate once the event end­ed, de­spite hun­dreds of mo­torists con­tin­u­ing to ex­it the area well in­to the fol­low­ing af­ter­noon. Grif­fith said the sit­u­a­tion was par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­ap­point­ing giv­en that fetes have tak­en place in Ch­aguara­mas for decades and that large crowds can be man­aged ef­fec­tive­ly with prop­er lead­er­ship, co­or­di­na­tion and ev­i­dence-based traf­fic plan­ning.

He said such events can ben­e­fit busi­ness­es through in­creased pa­tron­age if ef­fec­tive man­age­ment sys­tems are im­ple­ment­ed. Draw­ing on his tenure as com­mis­sion­er of po­lice, Grif­fith said traf­fic man­age­ment for ma­jor events was nev­er left to chance and re­lied on ad­vance an­a­lyt­i­cal as­sess­ments to iden­ti­fy his­tor­i­cal grid­lock points along the West­ern Main Road and sur­round­ing ar­eas.

He said of­fi­cers were de­lib­er­ate­ly po­si­tioned at those lo­ca­tions, with se­nior of­fi­cers present to su­per­vise and ad­just op­er­a­tions in re­al time, adding that he per­son­al­ly en­sured over­sight through di­rect in­volve­ment.

Grif­fith re­called one year when mul­ti­ple fetes were held on the same night at O2 Park, Up­ick and Pier 2, at­tract­ing crowds ex­ceed­ing 20,000 pa­trons, yet traf­fic flowed ef­fi­cient­ly, al­low­ing peo­ple to en­ter and ex­it the area with­in min­utes rather than hours.

He said the dif­fer­ence lay not in luck, road lay­out or man­pow­er, but in analy­sis-dri­ven plan­ning and lead­er­ship on the ground. Grif­fith al­so crit­i­cised the mis­use of terms such as “risk as­sess­ment” and “dis­as­ter man­age­ment” by in­di­vid­u­als with­out ex­pe­ri­ence in polic­ing, law en­force­ment op­er­a­tions or traf­fic com­mand, ar­gu­ing that these were spe­cialised dis­ci­plines re­quir­ing train­ing, ex­pe­ri­ence and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

He cau­tioned against com­men­tary from in­di­vid­u­als who have nev­er planned or com­mand­ed such op­er­a­tions, say­ing it of­ten gen­er­at­ed more noise than val­ue, par­tic­u­lar­ly when used to at­tack the Gov­ern­ment.

He said the Gov­ern­ment made the cor­rect de­ci­sion to move fetes from res­i­den­tial ar­eas to Care­nage, where they should af­fect few­er peo­ple. Grif­fith said while con­struc­tive crit­i­cism was vi­tal in a democ­ra­cy, it must be ground­ed in facts, warn­ing that base­less at­tacks on the Gov­ern­ment, the po­lice or oth­er au­thor­i­ties al­lowed those re­spon­si­ble for fail­ures to evade ac­count­abil­i­ty. “In the end, the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go de­serve com­pe­tent lead­er­ship from the TTPS, lead­er­ship that plans ahead, leads from the front, and takes re­spon­si­bil­i­ty when sys­tems fail.”