Last week, the Sun­day Guardian re­port­ed that be­tween 2014 and 2023, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) re­ceived up­wards of $25.5 bil­lion from the State.

Of course, not all the fund­ing re­ceived went di­rect­ly to crime de­tec­tion and pre­ven­tion, with a sig­nif­i­cant amount go­ing to salaries and up­keep, but treat­ing crime is ul­ti­mate­ly the ser­vice’s man­date.

Ac­cord­ing to Fi­nance Min­istry doc­u­ments, $21.9 bil­lion—86 per­cent—was spent by the TTPS on re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture alone, with the re­main­ing $3.6 bil­lion spent on de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes. In its con­tin­ued ex­am­i­na­tion of ex­pens­es and val­ue for mon­ey by the TTPS, this week, the Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk looks at the cost and main­te­nance of po­lice ve­hi­cles.

Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

De­spite spend­ing more than $1 bil­lion be­tween 2013 and 2023 to pur­chase, main­tain and rent ve­hi­cles, around 55 per cent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s fleet re­mains non-func­tion­al, with many ve­hi­cles writ­ten off or re­quir­ing re­pairs.

Out of the to­tal fleet of around 2,385 ve­hi­cles, more than 1,300 are in­ac­tive.

Hun­dreds of aban­doned po­lice ve­hi­cles can be found at lo­ca­tions across the coun­try, in­clud­ing op­po­site UTT’s Tamana Cam­pus in Cu­mu­to; Ste Madeleine; Union Hall in San Fer­nan­do; and next to the La Hor­quet­ta Po­lice Sta­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Fi­nance Min­istry doc­u­ments, the State spent at least $299 mil­lion on new po­lice ve­hi­cles dur­ing the 11 years. $118 mil­lion was spent un­der re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture and an­oth­er $181 mil­lion un­der De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme fund­ing. The doc­u­ments re­vealed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly $368 mil­lion was spent on main­te­nance, $177 mil­lion on fu­el and lu­bri­cants, and an­oth­er $172 mil­lion on rentals. A to­tal of $1,016,000,000.

The year with the high­est an­nu­al spend on ve­hi­cles was 2013, with $159 mil­lion. The year with the low­est spend was 2020, with $67.6 mil­lion.

As of Oc­to­ber 2024, ac­cord­ing to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, the TTPS had 2,219 ve­hi­cles. Dur­ing a Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee hear­ing, he said 546 need­ed re­pairs and 826 were to be writ­ten off.

Short­ly af­ter re­veal­ing those fig­ures, Hinds an­nounced the ar­rival of 93 new ve­hi­cles in Oc­to­ber and promised that 73 would be added to the TTPS by De­cem­ber 2024. Those ad­di­tions brought the to­tal fleet num­ber to around 2,385 ve­hi­cles.

“$1 bil­lion? Some­thing is wrong some­where. We are not see­ing the val­ue for mon­ey there. We don’t have enough ve­hi­cles to use. They re­cent­ly brought in some Toy­otas, but they are ground­ing the ve­hi­cles to not void the war­ranties as they are due for ser­vice,” one of­fi­cer, with more than 20 years of ex­pe­ri­ence said.

“It’s peo­ple up­stairs mak­ing the wrong de­ci­sions. Over the years, they made some bad de­ci­sions and the ve­hi­cles could not stand up. It’s a whole cy­cle con­tin­u­ing, which re­sults in the of­fi­cers on the ground and the pub­lic suf­fer­ing.”

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that at least 11 ve­hi­cles as­signed to the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion are ground­ed be­cause a rep­utable car com­pa­ny re­fus­es to ser­vice them due to out­stand­ing debts. The cars, pur­chased with­in the last four years, were used by di­vi­sion­al task forces, the In­ter­a­gency Task Force, and the Guard and Emer­gency Branch.

Ac­cord­ing to an­oth­er po­lice of­fi­cer who has been trained and au­tho­rised to dri­ve ve­hi­cles, over the years, the wrong ve­hi­cles, for ex­am­ple, Chevy Cruzes, were pur­chased for pa­trols.

“Who the hell would choose a Chevy as a po­lice ve­hi­cle when you could pur­chase an­oth­er type of ve­hi­cle and get parts eas­i­er?

“They are not main­tain­ing them. That’s a nor­mal thing. Right now, we are run­ning with a Chevy Cruze–you dri­ve it, but you might break down in it. The oil is black. I don’t know how the main­te­nance works. VM­COTT usu­al­ly sees about the ve­hi­cles, but now they have a bunch of con­trac­tors from all over the place fix­ing po­lice ve­hi­cles,” the of­fi­cer said.

The of­fi­cers ad­mit­ted, how­ev­er, that the ser­vice has be­gun pur­chas­ing more suit­able ve­hi­cles, but they com­plained about the state of the ve­hi­cles, say­ing they are dirty and in need of a full ser­vice.

The Ve­hi­cle Man­age­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (VM­COTT), es­tab­lished over 24 years ago, is a whol­ly state-owned agency with a man­date from the Gov­ern­ment to be “a cen­tral con­trol­ling agency to pro­vide fleet man­age­ment ser­vices to the pub­lic sec­tor as a whole”

A po­lice man­pow­er au­dit in 2018, how­ev­er, stat­ed that re­pairs and main­te­nance of ve­hi­cles at VM­COTT take too long. The TTPS has been util­is­ing pri­vate garages to do main­te­nance and re­pairs.

Dur­ing his 2025 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert promised 2,000 new ve­hi­cles for the TTPS over the next three years.

TA­BLE:

2013 - $159 MIL­LION

DE­VEL­OP­MENT PRO­GRAMME - VE­HI­CLES - $97.3 mil­lion

VE­HI­CLE MAIN­TE­NANCE - $46.2 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLE & EQUIP­MENT RENT - $5.5 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLES - $10 MIL­LION

2014 - $82.4 MIL­LION

DE­VEL­OP­MENT PRO­GRAMME - VE­HI­CLES - $31.1 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLE MAIN­TE­NANCE - $43.5 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLE & EQUIP­MENT RENT - $7.8 MIL­LION

2015 - $107.4 MIL­LION

DE­VEL­OP­MENT PRO­GRAMME - VE­HI­CLES - $16.7 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLE MAIN­TE­NANCE - $46 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLE & EQUIP­MENT RENT - $13.6 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLES - $31.1 MIL­LION

2016 - $76.1 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLE MAIN­TE­NANCE - $30.7 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLE & EQUIP­MENT RENT - $9.8 MIL­LION

FU­EL AND LU­BRI­CANTS - $19.6 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLES - $16 MIL­LION

2017 - $87.2 MIL­LION

DE­VEL­OP­MENT PRO­GRAMME - VE­HI­CLES - $1.9 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLE MAIN­TE­NANCE - $33.3 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLE & EQUIP­MENT RENT - $10.4 MIL­LION

FU­EL AND LU­BRI­CANTS - $26.8 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLES - $14.8 MIL­LION

2018 - $68.7 MIL­LION

DE­VEL­OP­MENT PRO­GRAMME - VE­HI­CLES - $1.5 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLE MAIN­TE­NANCE - $27.9 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLE & EQUIP­MENT RENT - $6.7 MIL­LION

FU­EL AND LU­BRI­CANTS - $18.6 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLES - $14 MIL­LION

2019 - $77.6 MIL­LION

DE­VEL­OP­MENT PRO­GRAMME - VE­HI­CLES - $2.7 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLE MAIN­TE­NANCE - $32 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLE & EQUIP­MENT RENT - $12 MIL­LION

FU­EL AND LU­BRI­CANTS - $20.6 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLES - $10.3 MIL­LION

2020 - $67.6 MIL­LION

DE­VEL­OP­MENT PRO­GRAMME - VE­HI­CLES - $1.2 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLE MAIN­TE­NANCE - $21.7 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLE & EQUIP­MENT RENT - $22.8 MIL­LION

FU­EL AND LU­BRI­CANTS - $21.9 MIL­LION

2021 - $77.4 MIL­LION

DE­VEL­OP­MENT PRO­GRAMME - VE­HI­CLES - $3.1 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLE MAIN­TE­NANCE - $25.1 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLE & EQUIP­MENT RENT - $27.7 MIL­LION

FU­EL AND LU­BRI­CANTS - $21.2 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLES - $275,000

2022 - $94.7 MIL­LION

DE­VEL­OP­MENT PRO­GRAMME - VE­HI­CLES - $18.5 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLE MAIN­TE­NANCE $28 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLE & EQUIP­MENT RENT - $23 MIL­LION

FU­EL AND LU­BRI­CANTS - $21 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLES - $4.2 MIL­LION

2023 - $119.1 MIL­LION

DE­VEL­OP­MENT PRO­GRAMME - VE­HI­CLES - $7.4 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLE MAIN­TE­NANCE - $33.7 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLE & EQUIP­MENT RENT - $33 MIL­LION

FU­EL AND LU­BRI­CANTS - $27 MIL­LION

VE­HI­CLES - $18 MIL­LION

Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Con­cerns

Con­cerns about the pro­cure­ment of the pur­chase, main­te­nance, and rental of po­lice ve­hi­cles were ex­pressed in sev­er­al Au­di­tor Gen­er­al re­ports be­tween 2013 and 2023.

* In 2013, the TTPS failed to pro­duce a reg­is­ter of con­tracts as re­quired by fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tions. As a re­sult, par­tic­u­lars of con­tracts award­ed and amounts out­stand­ing were not es­tab­lished.

* In 2014, con­trac­tu­al agree­ments val­ued at $12 mil­lion were not pro­duced for four ve­hi­cle garages. As a re­sult, it was not pos­si­ble to de­ter­mine the terms and con­di­tions of the en­gage­ments as well as stan­dard pric­ing struc­tures.

* Ad­di­tion­al­ly, ve­hi­cle log­books, re­quired for con­trol of mo­tor ve­hi­cle cus­tody and main­te­nance, were not up­dat­ed for any of the ve­hi­cles list­ed.

* In 2016, con­tract agree­ments worth $564,000 for five ser­vice providers con­cern­ing re­pairs and ser­vic­ing of po­lice ve­hi­cles were not pro­duced. Oth­er con­trac­tu­al agree­ments worth $129,000 for 15 providers for wash­ing and pol­ish­ing po­lice ve­hi­cles were al­so out­stand­ing.

* In 2017, $4.4 mil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing 42 per cent of to­tal ex­pen­di­ture un­der Main­te­nance of Ve­hi­cles, was paid to a pri­vate con­trac­tor. A con­tract was not pro­duced.

* In 2018, rental ser­vices worth $7.5 mil­lion were not pro­duced for au­dit. Al­so, com­mit­ments of $4.9 mil­lion were not prop­er­ly record­ed for cer­tain votes as re­quired by Fi­nan­cial Reg­u­la­tions 66 and 67.

* In 2019, in­voic­es amount­ing to $16 mil­lion from the 2017/2018 fi­nan­cial pe­ri­od were on­ly record­ed in the Vote Books for 2018/2019 at the time of pay­ment, vi­o­lat­ing fi­nan­cial di­rec­tives. In ad­di­tion, ve­hi­cle rental doc­u­ments for con­tracts worth $1.7 mil­lion were not pro­vid­ed.

* In 2022, an au­dit sur­vey at three po­lice sta­tions in May and June found that one sta­tion had not main­tained ve­hi­cle log­books or a coun­ter­foil reg­is­ter as re­quired by fi­nan­cial di­rec­tives. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the fleet card reg­is­ter had not been up­dat­ed since Oc­to­ber 2017, and a fleet card as­signed to one ve­hi­cle was in­stead used for an­oth­er ve­hi­cle.

* In 2023, vouch­ers to sup­port five pay­ments for ve­hi­cle rentals to­talling $1.2 mil­lion were not pro­vid­ed. It was al­so not­ed that sup­port­ing doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed for an ad­vanced pay­ment of $1.4 mil­lion for rental ser­vices were not ap­proved by the ac­count­ing of­fi­cer.

Man­pow­er Au­dit—Ur­gent Strate­gic De­ci­sions on Fleet Man­age­ment Need­ed

The March 2018 Po­lice Man­pow­er Au­dit Com­mit­tee, head­ed by Prof Ramesh De­osaran, re­port­ed ex­ten­sive­ly on the is­sue of fleet man­age­ment in the ser­vice.

* The re­port has not yet been im­ple­ment­ed, but one of its key find­ings was that a short­age of work­ing ve­hi­cles sig­nif­i­cant­ly hin­dered the po­lice’s abil­i­ty to per­form their du­ties.

* The main­te­nance of ve­hi­cles is not fre­quent enough, and parts are of­ten hard to lo­cate.

* A Ve­hi­cle Man­age­ment Unit and a fleet man­ag­er should be ap­point­ed. Re­pairs and main­te­nance of ve­hi­cles at VM­COTT take too long.

* Over 63 per cent of of­fi­cers in­ter­viewed said that the avail­abil­i­ty of ve­hi­cles to as­sist them in their jobs is “very un­sat­is­fac­to­ry/un­sat­is­fac­to­ry.”

* Tam­per-proof GPS track­ing de­vices should be placed in all po­lice ve­hi­cles to help im­prove man­pow­er man­age­ment.

* The com­mit­tee was not pro­vid­ed with any in­for­ma­tion on how much is spent an­nu­al­ly on the main­te­nance of ve­hi­cles. A prop­er fixed as­set sys­tem for ve­hi­cle list­ing should be es­tab­lished.

* A spe­cial au­dit con­duct­ed in March 2010 on the man­age­ment and main­te­nance of TTPS ve­hi­cles raised con­cerns about the mis­use of the car rental sys­tem, breach­es of TTPS stand­ing or­ders, du­pli­cate pay­ments for pur­chas­es, and the ab­sence of a clear ve­hi­cle pol­i­cy and pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, de­spite an in­crease in fleet size, rental ve­hi­cles were need­ed for covert op­er­a­tions by di­vi­sion­al squads re­spon­si­ble for crim­i­nal in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing and crime op­er­a­tions.

In 2006/2007, it was found that rental ex­pen­di­ture ex­ceed­ed the bud­get­ed amount by more than 80 per cent.

On av­er­age, be­tween De­cem­ber 2007 and Feb­ru­ary 2009, 65 ve­hi­cles were rent­ed per month.

“Ex­pen­di­ture for the fi­nan­cial years 2005/2006, 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 showed that the rental costs con­tin­ued to in­crease over the three years,” the re­port stat­ed.

Calls and What­sApp mes­sages to Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ban­jamin went unan­swered.