You know you could trust me

Two things that may not have drawn as much public attention as others stood out for me in Police Commissioner Gary Griffith’s jawdropping October 29 television interview with Fazeer Mohammed following police-involved killings of two teenaged and three young adult AfroTrinbagonians in Trou Macacaque.

The killings pushed the number of civilians killed by officers this year past 30, over three times the rate at which US police kill black people. (In comparison, our per-capita murder rate is six times that of the US.)

One of its most troublesome moments, in the middle of the interview, was Griffith’s Muslim-baiting of Mohammed, questioning why he had not heard the TV host speak out about sponsors of terrorism that mask themselves as non-profit organisations. Fazeer pointed out that he had and, further, that was not the point of the interview.

Gary’s Duterteesqueness had been pointed out quite astutely by Sunity Maharaj, in an opinion piece that preceded, and in fact fuelled, his interview comments, in which she noted that a few more “extrajudicial killings would make him unbeatable at the polls.”

Denise Demming has focused on his Trumpianness, his insistent use, as a law enforcement leader, of dismissive sarcasm—repeated references to a bereaved grandmother as Super Granny with a cloak flying through the air, to calls for accountability for police use of deadly force as coming from those “who never held a watergun in their life,” and derision of the premise that some of those gunned down were merely playing a game of cards, by asking if the burn injury of a police officer at the scene was from a very sharp Jack of Spades.

Demming honed in on the continuous characterisation of police officers as “mine.”

She noted, too, the self-inflicted embarrassments that bluster like Griffith’s creates. Flying in the face of his gun-talk about lowering murder rates and no roads being blocked on his watch, within days, were a slew of killings, and the Pt Fortin taxis’ protest.

Christlyn Moore (nickname Senator Visine) knows a distasteful and unbecoming remark when she encounters one.

At a forum focused on excessive police force in arresting two students among those agitating for campus security by blocking just one of four entrances to the UWI campus, she pointed out, to Griffith’s face, that his response to legitimate criticisms was to mock those making them.

Like a bully. Media report he repeated his interview punchline about people who’d watched too many Matrix movies expecting police to dodge bullets in slow motion, then do “a triple somersault and two jump-kick.” In his bellicose responses, Gary’s broadsides against critics of police actions targeted not just the criticisms, but demeaned and dismissed them and their work in other ways. “I am getting the support of 1.2 million plus people in this country,” he preened. Has TTPS commissioned a poll? Or was this an unscientific evening-news people meter? Perhaps the most poignant moment of the interview was when Griffith dubbed himself our Winston Churchill, a pugnacious saviour-of-the-hour who didn’t care about being driven out of office once the hard work had been done. Just the week before, I’d watched one of the new Churchill biopics which paid attention to Gallipoli, a 1915-16 military failure Churchill shared responsibility for which caused considerable political damage to his Government and led to his resignation.

“Oh Jesus Lord fadder” is the interview’s soundbite that has tickled the nation. After Gary had baited Fazeer yet again, asking whether he would “throw a pillow” at an armed criminal pointing a gun (another laughgetter he’s repeated on platforms), the civilian journalist said he would run. That response, which has become a nine-days meme, prompted the Griffith outburst.

“It’s making for good television,” Fazeer noted, during the interview, of Gary’s posturing. And it has made for even better social media. Mohammed has been wonderfully playful with it all, urging on air that caricaturists of his bullet-running at least depict him with fitting undergarments.

This is not a banana republic, the Filipino-sounding Griffith declared more than once, lamenting that worldwide people in law enforcement were laughing at “us” over vocal police violence critics’ unfamiliarity with firearm procedure.

That’s why one particular moment above all others, just past the interview half-hour mark, stood out so much I had to play it back. Pressing Mohammed to turn over information that made him confident police are corrupt, Griffith leaned in, on-air, and invoked:

“And you know you could trust me: CIC-CIC ting.”

And just like that, there was this smirking prestige-schoolboy (who now wears a different dress uniform) on my TV, leaning in on oligarchy with this man he’d just Muslim-shamed and sneered at.