Incompetence and Sabotage Mar the Career of Phillip

No career police officer with over 35 years in the Police Service will ever resign abruptly.

No police officer who has acted as Commissioner of Police six times under Ag Commissioner Stephen Williams will ever resign mere weeks before his official retirement becomes effective. And no police officer who has reached the rank of Deputy Commissioner who did not resign when he was bypassed for the post of Commissioner of Police would resign just so a year later. When two of Phillip’s sons, Kenwin and Kellon, were charged with possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking, DCP Harold Phillip did not resign. So why now? Sunshine Today decided to go underground and to get the real reasons for Phillips’ resignation. And it has to do with Phillip’s administration of the Police Organised Crime and Intelligence Unit (OCIU) and Griffith’s lack of faith in the competence of Phillip.

OCIU deliberately sabotaged court hearings

Many cases which the Police made especially over the last six months were dismissed by the court for lack of evidence by the OCIU who deliberately sabotaged the hearings. Recently three police officers were arrested for a series of charges including drugs and money laundering. One of them was deemed to a the son of a recently retired police officer. His bank accounts had funds far in excess of his salary and yet the case fell flat and the charges had to be dropped. Under Phillip the OCIU behaved as a runaway horse and most times the officers there will deliberately bypass the Commissioner of Police as well as the Head of the Police Legal Unit and go directly to Phillip and the DPP. This lack of protocol resulted in many cases being lost in the court because of a lack of legal oversight in the initial stages. Many of the officers in that Unit have been accused of taking hefty bribes to “kill cases.” It has been reported that Griffith and Phillip had a “man to man” talk last week where Griffith complained to Phillip about the inefficiencies and the incompetence of the OCIU as well as of Phillip’s own incompetence. As late as last Saturday the Unit embarassed the Commissioner of Police by giving him wrong advice relative to Buju Banton forcing the Police to search Buju’s hotel room at the Hilton for drugs. Nothing was found and the Commissioner had to apologise to the Jamaican Commissioner as well as to Buju and quell a potential trade conflict that would have erupted between Jamaica and Trinidad.

Griffith to disband the entire OCIU

Another area of concern was Phillip’s failure to pursue investigations into an item of correspondence emanating from the Office of the Director of the Strategic Services in which he should have taken appropriate action since 2017. When he was questioned on this apparent failure he could not explain and, instead of facing a charge for this oversight he tendered his resignation which was accepted by Griffith. Later this week Griffith is expected to disband the entire Organised Crime & Intelligence Unit and to bring new police officers to run that Unit.