By Prior Beharry
FORMER police commissioner Gary Griffith says that Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley uses Parliament to try to fool the public due to his obsession with legal firearms.
He made the comment in a video after Dr Rowley made his statement in the House of Representatives on Wednesday about the granting of Firearm Users’ Licences under Griffith’s tenure as top cop.
Griffith said, “Keith Rowley decides yet again to use Parliament to fool the country based on his obsession with legal firearms.
“His dangerous infatuation continues to overshadow the real issue of illegal firearms which have been responsible for the vast majority of murders in Trinidad and Tobago.”
Griffith asked, “How can he be so concerned about too many legal firearms being given to civilians yet he harassed me while I was commissioner to get a dealership for somebody in Tobago so that thousands of more firearms could be sold. This contradiction in his action needs to be addressed.”
He said Dr Rowley’s statements regarding the audit report on the FUL section of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service were highly questionable.
Griffith said the reason the court agreed to the injunction stopping the a report from being laid in Parliament and placed in the public domain was that the people that compiled the report never contacted him.
He said, “It is something known Keith Rowley as natural justice. You can’t hire people and pay them big money, let them write a report to smear someone’s character and not allow the person to defend themselves…”
Griffith said more than 3,000 people were killed by guns under Rowley’s leadership in the last decade. The former commissioner said 99.9% of these killings were by illegal guns.
He said, “It seems this man has a hatred for law-abiding citizens getting legal firearms and showing sympathy for criminal elements. To be clear, I gave out 6,000-odds firearms from 25,000-plus applications made by citizens over the last ten to 20 years that were being ignored by previous police commissioners.
“Half of these was given to citizens while the other half was given to past and present members of the protective service. This means that I gave out 0.3% of the population got firearms… His obsession is stopping law-abiding citizens from getting legal firearms.”
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