The Stanley John Report on the granting of FULs by the TTPS
This is an analysis of the Stanley John Report as published in the Sunday Express of 23 January 2022 and the Daily Express of 24 January 2022 as I have no sight and will never have sight of the said report, I am no player.
The publications in the Express newspaper of the John Report is to-date the most detailed description of the existence and operation of an organised crime group within the TTPS ever made public. The John Report outstrips the revelations of the Scott Drug Report and the Scotland Yard Report by miles. Like the Scott Drug Report the sitting commissioner of Police was named in the John Report but unlike Randolph Burroughs who was removed from service, humiliated then exonerated but never returned to service no such action against then Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith is forthcoming at the time of writing.
The John Report describes the operational existence of an organised crime group within the TTPS that is constantly assaulting the administrative structure of the TTPS in order to sell services in demand to clients from the public and so doing with impunity as they enriched themselves and weakened the efficacy of the TTPS thereby empowering those who purchased their services. This organised crime group exercises impunity to enrich themselves selling impunity to their clients. It is expected that such clients include transnational organised crime operatives who use this business relationship to penetrate to the bowels of the TTPS towards rendering it corrupt and ineffective. It is also expected that organised crime within the TTPS will move to serve their clients and amass personal wealth through the expenditure of the TTPS, the goods and services purchased by the TTPS from vendors external of the TTPS. This is premised on corrupting the financial administrative structure of the TTPS including internal audit, payroll and stores management. What must be understood is that all business models of transnational organised crime are not the same, complementary with each other. The Mexican TTOs do not purchase impunity as the Colombian Dons what they do is turn key members of the national security apparatus into traffickers in their own right, players who then set about the task of corrupting the agency they are a member of to ensure their ability to move increasing loads of product to consumer markets as Europe whilst increasing the volume and diversity of illicit imports to increase the wealth generated from the local market. This then is the most implacable threat faced by the national security apparatus of T&T in its history.
The John Report then indicates that the TTPS is open for business but the FUL section is attractive for those who insist that they are decent and respectable but need legal firearms to protect illicit operations from which they are amassing wealth. Then there are those who want to profit out of their connections to the FUL unit to broker gun licenses and the sale of firearms to such persons, these are the opportunists driven by desire for social prominence dangerous people to deal with. The demand for supply of licit firearms is greatest in that layer of persons who supply services to the Colombian Dons who are decent and respectable persons not those despicable Africans and Mixed race of Gangland, with their legal front businesses as cover. The Mexican TTOs have no use for such persons as they deal with Gangland squeezing the decent and respectable of the Colombian Dons methodically out of business, the desire for FULs is then driven by a war between discordant business models in the illicit trades of T&T and the Colombian Dons have lost the war all over the Caribbean Basin. These decent and respectable servants of the Colombian Dons faced with the unrelenting assault of the Mexican MTTOs and their Gangland affiliates desire militias armed with legal weapons. This reality is confirmed by the public announcement in Jamaica of an investigation into corruption in the Firearms Licensing Authority (FLA) which is exactly like that exposed by the John Report in T&T. The servants of the Colombian Dons as in T&T are shopping for legal firearms in Jamaica to form militias with legal arms and ammunition and precepts. This is a war the Colombian Dons and their servants have already lost and if they continue to prosecute this war USA extradition warrants will touch down for decent and respectable persons of civil society as the Mexican TTOs will inform on them in keeping with their business model.
When Gary Griffith became Commissioner of Police and decided to open the flood gates of FULs he was not handing guns to the masses but to, yes you guessed it.
The already breached FUL administrative system impacted by the Griffith decision to open the flood gates of FULs went into feeding frenzy for Griffith was throwing blood on the water under the control of TTPS organised crime and spectacularly refused to heed the warnings of corruption brought to him by members of the unit according to the John Report, whilst he was bumping his gum in public on corruption within the FUL section of the TTPS. Griffith according to the John Report was then adamant that the floodgate of FULs be opened fully though fully aware of the corruption within the unit, and took no action to root our the corruption even though he was personally responsible and accountable for the unit. Which raises the question if Griffith was personally benefiting from his policy? From the John Report it is apparent that Griffith chose to ride the back of the tiger of organised crime in the TTPS to attain his desired ends in the FUL unit without due care or concern for the impact this reckless action will have on the TTPS and the public safety of T&T. What is simply astounding is trusting the integrity of a system and signing off on applications produced by it whilst you are speaking to corrupt practices in the said unit in public whilst privately doing nothing to break the back of organised crime in the unit. Is this the actions of a person fit for purpose as Commissioner of Police in T&T? This is riding the back of the tiger whilst insisting publicly that you were at war with the tiger enabling the tiger to eat you and your post.
The only laudable aspect of the John Report was the professional, upright attitude of specific police personnel who worked in the FUL unit, who were willing to oppose the corrupt activities which exerted hegemony over the daily functioning of the unit to the detriment of their careers and to come forward and testify to their experiences to the Stanley John investigation. This conviction bodes well for the future of the TTPS for with leadership in place with the will and conviction to act to break the back of organised crime in the TTPS there will be the groundswell of support vitally necessary to break the back of organised crime within the TTPS. The imposition of leadership on the TTPS sourced externally of the TTPS has then failed dramatically with grave impacts on the fighting fitness of the TTPS to respond to the ever evolving terrain of criminality in T&T under the hegemony of transnational organised crime. The legacy left by the last Commissioner of Police potently illustrates the failure of politicians to micromanage the TTPS from 1962 to the present for the sole purpose of social control rather than public safety which has immersed the TTPS in inertia whilst the terrain of crime has evolved through to its fourth epoch with its accompanying business model driven by transnational organised crime. The TTPS must now be dragged screaming and bawling out of its organizational inertia into the fourth epoch of transnational organised crime hegemony over the terrain of criminality in T&T or embrace the steady evolution of public insecurity in T&T.