UNC Senator, Jayanti Lutchmedial is of the view that the entire process to appoint an Acting Police Commissioner be restarted.
Lutchmedial, in an interview with Newsday, said: “I think they will have to start this whole acting appointment process all over again or repeal paragraph four of the Legal Notice, in which case, (Gary) Griffith can’t be appointed (acting CoP). The harm in doing that is that the period of time that Griffith was acting meant that there was no Commissioner of Police for that period of time.
She added, “Everything he would have done during that period would have been invalid. The government needs to find a way to rectify that, which may mean that they have to retroactively appoint him acting with a new process.”
Lutchmedial said the only way she sees to fix this mess is for government to bring legislation to Parliament,”revoke paragraph four of the legal notice, and revoke the 2009 order (Legal Notice 103) and have a proper process of appointment, whether it is that the PSC can appoint people on contract or not and give Griffith a retroactive appointment from August 17. What they should do is use the wording of the 2009 order and include paragraph four of the Legal Notice 183 but remove the part about submitting the name to the President. That is a clean fix.”
She said the downside of not having Parliamentary oversight on the acting post is the possibility of having an acting top cop for an extensive period without Parliamentary input.
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