Gary wants Express to apologise, pay for ‘absurd’ articles – Trinidad Guardian

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has threat­ened to sue the Trinidad Ex­press news­pa­per over a re­port on his han­dling of firearms user’s li­cense (FUL) ap­pli­ca­tions. 

In a pre-ac­tion let­ter sent to the news­pa­per’s par­ent com­pa­ny One Caribbean Me­dia Lim­it­ed (OCM), late last week, Grif­fith’s lawyers claimed that the news­pa­per and its in­ves­tiga­tive re­porter Denyse Renne de­famed him in the re­port, which al­leged that a FUL had been is­sued to a per­son with con­vic­tions for il­le­gal firearms. 

“These al­le­ga­tions against the COP are defam­a­to­ry as they in­sin­u­ate that the COP is dis­hon­est, fa­cil­i­tates crim­i­nal­i­ty by sup­ply­ing crim­i­nal of­fend­ers with firearm li­cens­es, and is bi­ased in favour of donors to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS). Such in­fer­ences con­note the COP as be­ing un­re­li­able and in­com­pe­tent to act in his ca­pac­i­ty,” Grif­fith’s lawyer Joel Rop­er said. 

“More­over, there is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion or truth to such al­le­ga­tions and Ms Renne has not ad­vanced any ev­i­dence in sup­port of same,” he added. 

Rop­er al­so took aim at claims in the re­port on Oc­to­ber 25, that Grif­fith had favoured per­sons, who had sup­port­ed the I Sup­port Our Ser­vice (ISOS) ini­tia­tive, which is the brain­child of Grif­fith’s wife Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith.

“Ms Renne’s in­ter­est and in­sin­u­a­tion that a mere hand­ful of those in the busi­ness sec­tor who sup­port the Po­lice, through the ISOS project are in fact do­ing so on­ly to be grant­ed firearm li­cens­es, is an out­ra­geous and ab­surd in­sin­u­a­tion which seeks to do noth­ing more than cre­ate scan­dal and is on­ly in­tend­ed to be­smirch the name of the COP and his in­tegri­ty,” Rop­er said. 

He al­so not­ed that af­ter the ini­tial re­port, his client is­sued a de­tailed press re­lease ad­dress­ing the is­sues in the in­ter­est of trans­paren­cy. How­ev­er, he claimed that the news­pa­per still pub­lished an­oth­er er­ro­neous and ma­li­cious re­port the fol­low­ing day. 

“Sim­ply put, even af­ter my client clar­i­fied the po­si­tion, Ms Renne still ma­li­cious­ly pub­lished a state­ment that was to­tal­ly er­ro­neous, false, and mis­lead­ing with the clear in­tent to bring my client in­to odi­um, dis­re­pute, and re­duce his cred­i­bil­i­ty in the eyes of the pub­lic of T&T,” Rop­er said, as he not­ed that the re­ports were the lat­est in a se­ries of neg­a­tive re­ports on Grif­fith that were pub­lished. 

“They are unar­guably clear at­tacks on the COP which have ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed his per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tion, which pri­or to Ms Renne’s state­ments have been un­blem­ished and im­pec­ca­ble,” Rop­er added. 

Through the let­ter, Grif­fith is seek­ing a re­trac­tion, an apol­o­gy, and an un­der­tak­ing that sim­i­lar al­le­ga­tions would not be re­peat­ed.

Grif­fith is al­so seek­ing fi­nan­cial com­pen­sa­tion for dam­age to his rep­u­ta­tion. 

Rop­er gave the news­pa­per 14 days in which to re­spond to the let­ter be­fore he files the law­suit.  

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