Griffith: Lack of leadership caused PoS protest to last so long

Black Immigrant Daily News

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Gary Griffith. File photo/Sureash Cholai

APPLICANT for police commissioner Gary Griffith said the response to Monday’s protest by the state reeked of a lack of proper leadership.

In a telephone interview with Newsday on Tuesday, the former commissioner of police said police were seemingly left alone.

He recalled in 2020 when residents of east Port of Spain and other communities throughout the country staged multiple protests over the killing of three men, his officers then were able to quell the uprisings within minutes.

He said then there was a collaborative effort with several ministries including Works and Transport, Local Government and other arms of the National Security apparatus.

“It was shocking to hear the Minister of National Security in Parliament state that the intelligence did what was required to assist the police. If that was the case then the police would have been fully prepared and there would have been a pre-emptive strike or what is known as predictive policing based on intelligence-driven operations. That simply did not take place.”

He said there was no use of technology by the powers that be to assist police in stopping the protests which lasted for close to five hours.

Griffith said the National Operations Centre and the police operation command centre were not used to co-ordinate police responses to protests instead of officers playing a cat-and-mouse game.

“A major point was a lack of communication. The public, in contrast to two years ago, was not fully apprised of what was happening. They were fully aware (in 2020), so it did not cause panic and fake news to spread. We were monitoring through an operations centre anywhere that had traffic to ensure that it was cleared immediately. None of that was done. And this is no fault of the police officers or the police service. This has to do with leadership. If you have systems that are working, why remove it or not utilise it.”

On Monday, residents of Beetham Gardens, Sea Lots, Morvant, Nelson and Duncan Streets blocked roads and burnt tyres and debris protesting the police killing of three people.

The major protest took place at Sea Lots where the east and west bound lanes of the Beetham Highway demanding justice for the killing of Fabien Richards, 21, Leonardo Niko Williams and Isaiah Roberts, both 17.

The three were part of six people shot at by police ending in their deaths, the arrest of two men and a fourth person, 16-year-old Malakai Glenn, hospitalised.

The two men who were arrested were released on Monday night and Tuesday without charge.

The Police Complaints Authority (PCA) said anyone with information pertaining to the shooting deaths, which police said was after a shootout and car chase, should come forward.

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