Griffith warns against abandoning ZOSOs

JESSE RAMDEO

Se­nior Re­porter

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has urged law­mak­ers not to aban­don the pro­posed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOs), warn­ing that the de­ci­sion risks giv­ing crim­i­nals “the up­per hand” and un­der­min­ing pub­lic safe­ty.

He ad­dressed the coun­try, in­clud­ing Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors, in a me­dia re­lease in which he de­scribed the re­jec­tion of ZOSO as “a grave and deeply con­se­quen­tial er­ror in judge­ment”.

Grif­fith said he was not speak­ing as a politi­cian or ad­vanc­ing any par­ty agen­da, but draw­ing on “decades of ex­pe­ri­ence, train­ing, and ser­vice in law en­force­ment and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty at the high­est lev­els”.

He point­ed to the coun­try’s ex­pe­ri­ence un­der a na­tion­wide State of Emer­gency over the past four­teen months, im­ple­ment­ed un­der both PNM and UNC ad­min­is­tra­tions, which grant­ed au­thor­i­ties pow­ers broad­er than those pro­posed un­der ZOSO.

“That State of Emer­gency ap­plied na­tion­al­ly, not se­lec­tive­ly, and yet through­out that en­tire pe­ri­od there were no sub­stan­ti­at­ed re­ports of sys­temic po­lice abuse, no wave of ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings, no po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion, and no wide­spread mis­use of au­thor­i­ty at­trib­uted to the SOE it­self,” Grif­fith said.

He ques­tioned the re­jec­tion of a more lim­it­ed and tar­get­ed mech­a­nism, ask­ing:

“If a na­tion­wide SOE did not pro­duce the abus­es now be­ing sug­gest­ed, how can a di­min­ished ver­sion, con­fined to spe­cif­ic high-risk ar­eas, sud­den­ly be deemed un­ac­cept­able?”

Grif­fith ac­knowl­edged con­cerns raised about a re­cent po­lice shoot­ing and com­ments made by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, de­scrib­ing them as le­git­i­mate but ad­dress­able. He said safe­guards such as manda­to­ry body-worn cam­eras for of­fi­cers op­er­at­ing with­in ZOSO ar­eas and the com­pul­so­ry use of less-lethal op­tions in­clud­ing tasers and pep­per spray could have re­duced or elim­i­nat­ed fears of abuse.

“In­stead of strength­en­ing over­sight and re­fin­ing im­ple­men­ta­tion, the de­ci­sion was tak­en to aban­don the mea­sure al­to­geth­er,” he said.

He ar­gued that sus­tain­able crime re­duc­tion de­pend­ed on pol­i­cy im­ple­men­ta­tion rather than po­lit­i­cal pos­tur­ing, re­call­ing that past re­duc­tions in vi­o­lent crime fol­lowed the in­tro­duc­tion of new strate­gies, spe­cialised units, im­proved equip­ment, tech­nol­o­gy, and sys­tems, with­out re­liance on pro­longed States of Emer­gency that al­lowed in­def­i­nite de­ten­tion.

Grif­fith said there had been a “no­tice­able ab­sence of new poli­cies, units, tech­nolo­gies, or op­er­a­tional in­no­va­tions” from the cur­rent po­lice lead­er­ship over the past year. In that con­text, he de­scribed ZOSO as “a crit­i­cal front­line tool to peg back crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty”, warn­ing that with­out such mea­sures the coun­try risked a re­turn to es­ca­lat­ing vi­o­lence and mur­der fig­ures ex­ceed­ing 600 an­nu­al­ly.

The com­ments fol­low the fail­ure of the Law Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment 2026 Bill in the Sen­ate last night. The leg­is­la­tion re­quired a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty for pas­sage but did not re­ceive sup­port from a sin­gle In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor.

Af­ter four sit­tings of the Up­per House, the 15 Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tors vot­ed in favour, while 14 Sen­a­tors vot­ed against, in­clud­ing eight of the nine In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors and six Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tors. In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Court­ney Mc Nish ab­stained.

The Gov­ern­ment re­quired the sup­port of at least four In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors for the Bill to pass.

Grif­fith said the op­er­a­tional el­e­ments of ZOSO could have been ad­just­ed but warned that aban­don­ing the ini­tia­tive had clear con­se­quences.

“The bal­ance has once again been tipped in favour of crim­i­nal el­e­ments,” he said, adding that the de­ci­sion sent “the wrong sig­nal to crim­i­nals, to law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, and to the front­line of­fi­cers tasked with pro­tect­ing our com­mu­ni­ties.”

He added: “This out­come is not a vic­to­ry for civ­il lib­er­ties, nor is it a tri­umph of prin­ci­ple. It is a set­back for pub­lic safe­ty.”