Griffith laughs at Young’s SRP application

COMMISSIONER of Police Gary Griffith laughed loudly when asked about National Security Minister Stuart Young's request to be made a special reserve police officer (SRP) to fight crime.

"I am eagerly awaiting his application form," he said eventually.

Young asked the CoP and the Police Social and Welfare Association (PSWA) to make him an SRP, during the handover ceremony last week of a parcel of land to the PSWA at Brickfield Road and Waterloo Road, Carapichaima.

Young said, “They always say is the minister who has to be responsible. I take all the responsibilities in the world, and I have asked them to make me an SRP, so I can be in the trenches and work along with the police service."

Griffith, in a phone interview, said all citizens are eligible to be SRPs and he takes every single application seriously. He said there was a false perception that everyone must have been trained for six months and have powers of arrest,.

"There are many people who hold civilian positions who are members of the service," he pointed out.

He said, for example, the E999 and emergency response centres were staffed by civilians, and lamented that hundreds of police officers have been boxed in doing administrative, logistical and finance work behind a desk, so he wants to pump civilian staff into the service.

"I need my officers in uniform to be out on the ground. (And) we will start having boots on the ground."

He said the public will be seeing a lot more foot patrols, not just to increase visible presence, but to play a critical part in intelligence-gathering as they interact with citizens, gain their trust, receive information and have it summarised and turned into intelligence.

For the SRPs, Griffith said he wanted to have more of them in specialist units such as the Fraud Squad, cybercrime, witness protection, child protection, forensic testing and the cold case unit: "Good-quality people who can fill a void and assist and uplift units."