Griffith: Proper policing can avert another SoE

One day af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she would not hes­i­tate to de­clare an­oth­er State of Emer­gency (SoE) if se­cu­ri­ty threats re-emerge, for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said such a de­ci­sion would be un­nec­es­sary if the po­lice and oth­er arms of law en­force­ment max­imised their ca­pa­bil­i­ties through tech­nol­o­gy.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via What­sApp yes­ter­day, Grif­fith, who al­so served as min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, said Per­sad-Bisses­sar was well with­in her rights to de­clare an­oth­er SoE if she saw fit. How­ev­er, he said such a de­ci­sion would be un­nec­es­sary if prop­er polic­ing strate­gies were draft­ed and ex­e­cut­ed.

Re­fer­ring to var­i­ous crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tives rolled out dur­ing his tenure in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and the suc­cess­es ob­served at that time, Grif­fith said an SoE was usu­al­ly a last re­sort when oth­er ini­tia­tives had failed.