FORMER commissioner of police (CoP) Gary Griffith on Sunday slammed CoP Erla Harewood-Christopher for her claim that 100 legal guns have been used in crimes.

Harewood-Christopher made the claim in a sworn statement filed in the High Court two weeks ago, in response to a lawsuit of gun dealer Towfeek Ali who is seeking permission to import ammunition.

She raised serious national security concerns and the stability of the country over such imports, the poor accounting records of guns and ammunition imported, the possession of "military-grade" guns and 5.56 and 7.62 ammunition in the hands of civilians which can pierce wood, concrete, metal and body armour worn by police.

Harewood-Christopher disclosed incomplete statistics between 2016-2022 which show the quantity of guns and ammunition imported by gun dealers for "non-law enforcement purposes" skyrocketed with an all-time high in 2020 of 57.2 million rounds, "almost 44 times the population" of TT. Some 306 permits were approved allowing gun dealers to bring in 64,553 guns that year; in 2021 the number of import permits went down to 115 allowing dealers to bring in 43,557 guns and 18,899,000 rounds of ammunition, and in 2022 only 35 import permits were approved allowing dealers to bring in 2,701 guns and 8,676,746 rounds of ammunition.

In a statement, Griffith, who is now National Transformation Alliance (NTA) political leader, described Harewood-Christopher's claim as "disingenuous, deceitful, deceptive."

He accused the top cop, who recently received a one-year extension of her contract, of singing for her supper and following the failed narrative of certain politicians about legal firearms and crime.

Griffith said, "We challenge Erla to list the crimes, because we are sure it would be items such as negligent discharge by officers, where several occur a year, and being ‘involved’, when FUL(firearm user licence) holders used their legal firearm to fight back when they are victims of crime."

He said with some 20 thousand crimes committed a year, and the report which Harewood-Christopher referred to spans over ten years, "this means it’s actually 100 ‘crimes’ in 200,000, which is 0.05 per cent of crimes she chose to focus on.

Harewood-Christopher, Griffith continued,"fails to grasp that revealing the amount of ammunition a FUL holder is legally allowed to own, perhaps puts them in danger from attacks by the criminals who may now target holders."

Griffith urged Harewood-Christopher to use her "one year extension, which no one can revoke, to do her job dispassionately, without fear or favour, and in accordance with her sworn oath of protecting and serving all the citizens of TT."

He reiterated his disappointment that Harewood-Christopher ought to know better in light of matters such as the Brent Thomas "abduction" and the Prime Minister and the National Security Council (NSC) being blocked by the court from laying the FUL audit report in Parliament.

Attorney Nyree Alfonso, one of the attorneys in the matter with the CoP and a director of the Firea