Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Be­tween 2014 and 2023, a pe­ri­od of ten years, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) re­ceived up­wards of $25.5 bil­lion from the State, ac­cord­ing to pub­lic da­ta.

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

Ac­cord­ing to Fi­nance Min­istry doc­u­ments, $21.9 bil­lion was spent by the TTPS in re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture alone. That is 86 per cent of the to­tal ex­pen­di­ture. The re­main­ing $3.6 bil­lion was spent on de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes.

With 34,318 crimes de­tect­ed, this means that, on av­er­age, the TTPS re­ceived ap­prox­i­mate­ly $743,000 in fund­ing for every crime de­tect­ed, while for every crime com­mit­ted in the coun­try, the TTPS col­lect­ed $206,000 in fund­ing. But pump­ing bil­lions in­to the TTPS did not have a net pos­i­tive im­pact on crime—there were 123,664 re­port­ed crimes dur­ing that pe­ri­od—an av­er­age of 12,360 per year. Be­tween 2014 and 2023, there were 5,472 mur­ders re­port­ed, with 729 of them de­tect­ed. The year with the most mur­ders dur­ing that pe­ri­od was 2022. How­ev­er, 2024 even­tu­al­ly record­ed the most in the coun­try’s his­to­ry with 624 mur­ders.

The year with the low­est num­ber of mur­ders dur­ing that pe­ri­od was 2020, with 393. For every mur­der re­port­ed—there were 5,472 mur­ders be­tween 2013 and 2024—the TTPS was giv­en ap­prox­i­mate­ly $4.7 mil­lion in fund­ing, while the TTPS got $35 mil­lion in fund­ing for every mur­der it de­tect­ed (729).

Homi­cide to­tals

2014 - 403

2015 - 420

2016 - 462

2017 - 495

2018 - 517

2019 - 536

2020 - 393

2021 - 448

2022 - 605

2023 - 577

Ex­pen­di­ture/fund­ing ta­ble

2014 - $1.46B (re­cur­rent)

Pro­gramme Ex­pen­di­ture - $418.9 mil­lion

2015 - $2.1B (re­cur­rent)

Pro­gramme Ex­pen­di­ture - $1B

2016 - $2.3B (re­cur­rent)

Pro­gramme Ex­pen­di­ture - $1.2B

2017 - $2.6B (re­cur­rent)

Pro­gramme Ex­pen­di­ture - $33.1M

2018 - $2.1B (re­cur­rent)

Pro­gramme Ex­pen­di­ture - $60.9 M

2019 - $2.1 bil­lion (re­cur­rent)

Pro­gramme Ex­pen­di­ture - $98.7M

2020 - $2.3B (re­cur­rent)

Pro­gramme Ex­pen­di­ture - $113.5M

2021 -$2.2B (re­cur­rent)

Pro­gramme Ex­pen­di­ture - $109.2M

2022 -$2.3 B (re­cur­rent)

Pro­gramme Ex­pen­di­ture - $88.3M

2023 - $2.4 B (re­cur­rent - es­ti­mate)

Pro­gramme Ex­pen­di­ture - $37M (es­ti­mate)

PSIP - $27M

A lack of po­lit­i­cal will?

In April 2023, dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty (JS­CON), on an In­quiry in­to the Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Sys­tem in T&T to de­ter­mine strate­gies to achieve greater ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness, then Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Cristo­pher was asked about the most com­mon chal­lenges af­fect­ing the ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

She replied with five points.

“The lack of speed in deal­ing with crim­i­nal cas­es, es­pe­cial­ly firearm-re­lat­ed mat­ters. Porous bor­ders (points of en­try). Oth­er agen­cies re­spon­si­ble for bor­der con­trol need to be on­board. Porous prison sys­tems where mo­bile de­vices en­able com­mu­ni­ca­tion to com­mit crimes are hap­pen­ing too fre­quent­ly,” she said.

She al­so said that some of the laws are too ar­cha­ic, with max­i­mum penal­ties of small fines, and that the ab­sence of laws gov­ern­ing so­cial me­dia was a prob­lem, re­sult­ing in an ab­sence of bound­aries.

In 2022, an­oth­er JS­CON on an in­quiry in­to the safe­ty, se­cu­ri­ty and pro­tec­tion of cit­i­zens with spe­cif­ic ref­er­ence to the fac­tors that con­tribute to the preva­lence of il­le­gal firearms and gun vi­o­lence in T&T re­port­ed that T&T suf­fers from a bor­der con­trol cri­sis, ow­ing to the lack of ef­fi­cien­cy of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard, and a gun re­trieval cri­sis, ow­ing to the lack of ef­fi­cien­cy of the TTPS.

The re­port iden­ti­fied crit­i­cal fac­tors need­ed to im­prove the ser­vice’s suc­cess. It said that mod­ernising the ser­vice to in­crease ac­count­abil­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy was ur­gent. It stat­ed that “the com­mit­tee, there­fore, rec­om­mends that the Prime Min­is­ter move im­me­di­ate­ly to adopt the rec­om­men­da­tions of the 5th Re­port of the JSC on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty on the Fi­nal Re­port of the Po­lice Man­pow­er Au­dit Com­mit­tee, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing the com­mence­ment of a Cab­i­net-ap­proved TTPS In­sti­tu­tion­al Strength­en­ing Project with a pri­ma­ry man­date, among oth­er things, to im­ple­ment a new struc­ture of gov­er­nance and over­sight for the TTPS, in­clud­ing a Po­lice In­spec­torate.”

It added that “what­ev­er ‘in­de­pen­dence’ is giv­en to the Po­lice Over­sight Body (POB), the sit­u­a­tion is such to­day that co-or­di­na­tion and co-op­er­a­tion are vi­tal to over­come the so­phis­ti­cat­ed chal­lenges posed by crim­i­nals and their ac­com­plices.”

Three years lat­er, nei­ther the TTPS In­sti­tu­tion­al Strength­en­ing Project nor the Po­lice In­spec­torate has been ini­ti­at­ed or com­plet­ed. The PNM, while cam­paign­ing for the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion, al­so promised in its man­i­festo to take ac­tion.

“For max­i­mum ef­fi­cien­cy, the Po­lice Ser­vice will be strength­ened at all lev­els by the es­tab­lish­ment of an ap­pro­pri­ate Po­lice Man­age­ment Agency. The PNM will es­tab­lish a Po­lice Ser­vice In­spec­torate,” the PNM’s 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion man­i­festo stat­ed. A Po­lice In­spec­torate is re­spon­si­ble for de­vel­op­ing and man­ag­ing train­ing pro­grammes; su­per­vis­ing po­lice pro­grammes; and mon­i­tor­ing po­lice per­for­mance.

A sur­vey of 2,051 peo­ple done by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (pub­lished in late 2024) found that:

• 82% of peo­ple feared be­ing a vic­tim of rob­bery, house­break­ing or home in­va­sion.

• 85% were afraid that a fam­i­ly mem­ber or friend would be a vic­tim of crime.

• 75% were dis­pleased with the TTPS’ han­dling of white-col­lar crime.

• 70% were dis­sat­is­fied with how the CoP deals with TTPS cor­rup­tion.

• 74% feared be­ing on the streets in their neigh­bour­hood at night.

• 66% were not pleased with the job po­lice were do­ing in the coun­try.

• 63% feared dri­ving at night in their com­mu­ni­ty.

• 61% were scared of be­ing in their yard at night.

• 57% were un­sat­is­fied with the po­lice per­for­mance in their com­mu­ni­ty.

• 53% were dis­sat­is­fied with their in­ter­ac­tions with po­lice.

• 50% were afraid to be on the streets in their neigh­bour­hood dur­ing the day.

The Po­lice Man­pow­er Au­dit Re­port

The dire need for es­tab­lish­ing a Po­lice In­spec­torate and mod­ernising the ser­vice was iden­ti­fied in in­quiries go­ing back to 1958 in the Lee Com­mit­tee. It was fol­lowed by the Dar­by Com­mit­tee in 1964; the Carr Com­mit­tee in 1971; the 1978 Bruce Com­mit­tee; the Po­lice Ex­ec­u­tive Re­search Fo­rum Study of 1990; the 1991 O’Dowd Com­mit­tee; the 2006 Mas­trof­s­ki Re­port; and the Oc­to­ber 2017 Po­lice Man­pow­er Au­dit Re­port.

Dur­ing a han­dover press con­fer­ence, the com­mit­tee’s chair­man Prof Ramesh De­osaran, pre­sent­ed the 600-page doc­u­ment to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

“You can’t wear the uni­form and be a crim­i­nal. There ought to be a ze­ro-tol­er­ance pol­i­cy for per­sons who en­ter in­to the ser­vice and demon­strate an un­suit­abil­i­ty for the job,” PM Row­ley said at the brief­ing.

On the open­ing page of the doc­u­ment, there was a quote. “When one con­sid­ers the his­to­ry of pre­vi­ous in­quiries, their seem­ing­ly ig­nored rec­om­men­da­tions, and the range of chal­lenges fac­ing the TTPS, it will be a delu­sion to think that all will be well quick­ly once a per­ma­nent Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and deputies are ap­point­ed. From what this man­pow­er au­dit has dis­cov­ered, there is still a lot of work to do. The time to start is now.”

The re­port’s ex­ec­u­tive sum­ma­ry stat­ed it is now very clear that for a long time, the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion has been ex­treme­ly an­gry and frus­trat­ed not on­ly about crime, vi­o­lence, and po­lice per­for­mance but al­so about the in­abil­i­ty of the au­thor­i­ties to deal more ag­gres­sive­ly and pos­i­tive­ly with the gen­er­al prob­lem.

Some of the key Man­pow­er Au­dit Re­port’s find­ings were:

• The TTPS is in a very trou­bled and wound­ed state. It is trou­bled main­ly be­cause of the com­plex net­work of prob­lems fac­ing it and wound­ed be­cause it con­tin­ues to be un­able to res­cue and re­cov­er it­self. 500 of­fi­cers ran­dom­ly se­lect­ed across ranks sug­gest­ed the need for help. When asked whether they thought the TTPS was sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly or­gan­ised to deal ef­fec­tive­ly with crime, over half (54 per cent) of the of­fi­cers said “very un­sat­is­fac­to­ry” or “un­sat­is­fac­to­ry”.

• Giv­en its pub­lic safe­ty and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty du­ties, the re­form of the TTPS has to be treat­ed as an emer­gency through col­lec­tive, non-par­ti­san will for such to be ef­fect­ed sus­tain­ably.

• A par­a­digm shift is re­quired in the minds of the youth and, by ex­ten­sion, the wider pop­u­la­tion. The com­plaints and preva­lent dis­sat­is­fac­tion with­in the TTPS it­self about tri­bunal de­lays, un­fair pro­mo­tions, lack of equip­ment, etc, add to the loss of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s rep­u­ta­tion.

• When of­fi­cers were asked whether they felt favouritism ex­ist­ed in as­sign­ing in­di­vid­u­als to var­i­ous di­vi­sions, units, or sec­tions, 66 per cent said “very of­ten” or “of­ten”.

• Even though all of­fi­cers do not com­mit mis­con­duct, there is a suf­fi­cient num­ber of peo­ple in the ser­vice who can cause pub­lic alarm. Sev­er­al se­nior of­fi­cials from the TTPS and re­lat­ed in­tel­li­gence units ex­plained the dis­turb­ing ex­tent to which a par­tic­u­lar type of cor­rup­tion has con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed the TTPS over the years. When cer­tain po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions or raids are be­ing con­fi­den­tial­ly planned, ad­vance warn­ings (leaks) are giv­en to the tar­gets of these planned po­lice ac­tions. The of­fi­cials said such “tip-offs” can on­ly come from in­side the plan­ning team.

• The Hu­man Re­source Sys­tem of the TTPS is in dire con­di­tion re­gard­ing record col­lec­tion, stor­age, and re­trieval. As such, a man­u­al-dri­ven sys­tem stored in card­board box­es in 2017 will not suf­fice.

Last week, Prof De­oso­ran made an­oth­er ap­peal for the re­port’s 82 rec­om­men­da­tions to be im­ple­ment­ed.

Re­searchers: Dis­ci­pli­nary process­es in tat­ters

The Pal­grave Hand­book of Caribbean Crim­i­nol­o­gy, edit­ed by lo­cal crim­i­nol­o­gist Wen­dell Wal­lace, was pub­lished in Ju­ly 2024.

Re­searchers Dan­ny Carr and Tama­ra Forde in­ter­viewed 27 po­lice of­fi­cers in su­per­vi­so­ry or man­age­r­i­al po­si­tions, in­clud­ing three se­nior su­per­in­ten­dents and two re­tired of­fi­cers—one a for­mer as­sis­tant CoP and the oth­er, a for­mer deputy CoP. Their re­search con­clud­ed that ev­i­dence sup­ports the view that TTPS cor­rup­tion can be ex­plained by the ser­vice’s or­gan­i­sa­tion­al cul­ture of low ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“Dur­ing the da­ta analy­sis, four themes emerged. These themes are: (1) the dis­ci­pli­nary process is too cum­ber­some, (2) the dis­ci­pli­nary process harms the of­fi­cer’s ca­reer, (3) the dis­ci­pli­nary process harms the or­gan­i­sa­tion, and (4) there are in­for­mal al­ter­na­tives to the dis­ci­pli­nary process that are less harm­ful.”

“The re­searchers found that all par­tic­i­pants in the sam­ple were re­luc­tant to ini­ti­ate the dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings against po­lice of­fi­cers sus­pect­ed of mis­con­duct be­cause they had a neg­a­tive at­ti­tude to­wards the dis­ci­pli­nary process, they be­lieved the dis­ci­pli­nary process was harm­ful to the ca­reer of the sus­pect­ed of­fi­cer, and the dis­ci­pli­nary process, if reg­u­lar­ly ini­ti­at­ed, would harm the TTPS, and there were in­for­mal al­ter­na­tives to the dis­ci­pli­nary process that were less harm­ful to the of­fi­cer and or­gan­i­sa­tion …

“To in­crease ac­count­abil­i­ty in the TTPS and there­fore re­duce po­lice cor­rup­tion and mis­con­duct, po­lice prac­ti­tion­ers need to come up with in­no­v­a­tive ways to change the un­der­ly­ing be­liefs and at­ti­tudes of su­per­vi­sors and man­agers that pro­mote low ac­count­abil­i­ty.”

Be­tween 2019 and Ju­ly 2023, ap­prox­i­mate­ly one out of every 24 of­fi­cers in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) was charged with a crim­i­nal of­fence. More than 2,260 com­plaints were made to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) about po­lice of­fi­cers’ con­duct. More than 1,640 were crim­i­nal com­plaints, an av­er­age of 328 per year.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, be­tween Jan­u­ary 2019 and Ju­ly 2023, 268 po­lice of­fi­cers ap­peared be­fore the courts on crim­i­nal charges—an av­er­age of five of­fi­cers per month, ac­cord­ing to fig­ures pre­vi­ous­ly pro­vid­ed by T&T Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Gideon Dick­son.

CoP Er­la Hare­wood-Cristo­pher was sus­pend­ed by the PSC as an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to her pos­si­ble role in the pro­cure­ment of two sniper ri­fles for the Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Agency con­tin­ues. Hare­wood-Cristo­pher was ar­rest­ed on Jan­u­ary 30 and re­leased with­out charge on Feb­ru­ary 1. Ju­nior Ben­jamin was ap­point­ed as the act­ing CoP over a week ago.

PSC al­so needs re­struc­tur­ing

The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, which is re­spon­si­ble for ap­point­ing the CoP and deputy CoPs among oth­er func­tions, is al­so in ur­gent need of re­struc­tur­ing.

“The ap­proval of the new struc­ture and sub­se­quent staffing to car­ry out the di­rec­tions of the com­mis­sion will en­able it to achieve its con­sti­tu­tion­al man­date,” the PSC’s 2023 an­nu­al re­port, pre­sent­ed to Par­lia­ment in late 2024, said.

The re­port al­so raised con­cerns about the staffing of its sec­re­tari­at.

“Dur­ing the pe­ri­od un­der re­view, the Ser­vice Com­mis­sions De­part­ment con­tin­ued its dis­cus­sions with the Pub­lic Man­age­ment Con­sult­ing Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion on pro­pos­als for re­struc­tur­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion Sec­re­tari­at. The sec­re­tari­at is cur­rent­ly not op­er­at­ing with the re­quired staff nor the full staff com­ple­ment, which con­tin­ues to be chal­lenged to car­ry out the com­mis­sion’s man­date,” the 2023 re­port stat­ed.