Former TTPS leaders not surprised by $6m bill to repair CoP’s residence

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is urg­ing the pub­lic to look be­yond the pro­posed $6 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for re­pairs to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence in St James, and in­stead ex­am­ine whether pub­lic as­sets are be­ing man­aged with sound judge­ment.

Re­fer­ring to the his­toric prop­er­ty at the Po­lice Acad­e­my, Grif­fith said, “I would cau­tion against mak­ing the $6 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for the re­fur­bish­ment of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence in­to a ma­jor con­tro­ver­sy with­out first un­der­stand­ing the na­ture, his­to­ry and struc­tur­al re­quire­ments of the build­ing.”

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While ac­knowl­edg­ing that $6 mil­lion is a sub­stan­tial sum, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the many needs with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), Grif­fith said the ser­vice typ­i­cal­ly re­ceives an an­nu­al bud­get of about $3 bil­lion.