00:00Former Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith said the law governing preventative detention
00:04orders needed to be changed, arguing that politicians should not have the authority
00:08to incarcerate people for months based on intelligence that had not been converted
00:13into evidence. Griffith was speaking on TV6's Morning Edition program This Morning
00:18as questions continued over the revocation of the PDO against Star Sabga and the release of
00:25other people detained under similar orders. He said the existing legislation gave the line
00:31minister the authority to sign a PDO based on what was considered credible intelligence
00:36without requiring sufficient evidence to bring criminal charges.
00:40As I said, it's either only in a banana republic or a communist country that a politician can
00:46have authority to incarcerate someone for months without evidence. Only in a banana republic
00:51or a communist country. So a PDO should really be a political detention order because politicians
00:57are not supposed to be the factor to decide if someone is guilty or not or if someone should
01:02be jailed or not. Griffith said intelligence was subjective and argued that lawyers involved
01:07in the process were not responsible for determining whether intelligence was sufficiently reliable
01:13to become evidence for criminal charges. He said the absence of enough evidence was precisely
01:18why PDOs were being used and he even referenced to the recent detention of Ms. Sabga.
01:24There was never enough evidence for charges to be laid because if it is that something was
01:30so serious the charges would be laid and you don't need a PDO. The reason for a PDO is because
01:35of failure to have enough evidence for charges to be laid so that that's how the persons can now be
01:40incarcerated indefinitely unless they get bailed. Griffith also addressed the state of emergency and said that
01:46while it had contributed to a reduction in murders, he did not believe an SOE should be used as a
01:52crime
01:52fighting tool. He said the powers provided under the SOE allowed authorities to detain people they
01:58believe could commit crimes, but argued that this was not how the criminal justice system should operate.
02:05Griffith said the reduction in murders had come at a cost and warned that the release of people detained
02:10under the SOE could lead to renewed gang conflict. He said some gang members may have taken control
02:17while others were detained, creating the possibility of fight and retaliation when those detainees returned.
02:24He therefore called for a different approach to crime once the SOE powers were no longer available.
02:30He said that these should include high visibility policing, rapid response technology,
02:35specialized units, and systems to measure police performance. He also called for the increased use
02:42of body cameras, tasers, pepper spray, GPS tracking of police vehicles, and a rapid response system.
02:50Alexander Brusual, T6 News.
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