Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin has ad­mit­ted that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice erred in the way it pre­vi­ous­ly han­dled the pur­chas­ing and main­te­nance of many of its ve­hi­cles.

The Act­ing CoP’s ad­mis­sion comes af­ter a Sun­day Guardian in­ves­tiga­tive sto­ry that re­vealed that around 55 per cent of the TTPS’ fleet of 2,388 ve­hi­cles is out of ser­vice de­spite it spend­ing more than $1 bil­lion in pur­chas­ing, main­tain­ing and rent­ing ve­hi­cles be­tween 2013 and 2023.

Ac­cord­ing to Act­ing CoP Ben­jamin, it’s an area that he is work­ing on, as he aims to im­prove val­ue for the ser­vice’s mon­ey.

“The whole idea of re­pairs of ve­hi­cles, we want to en­sure that there is a prop­er sys­tem in place, where we will be able to mon­i­tor our ve­hi­cles on a reg­u­lar ba­sis to en­sure that when ve­hi­cles are due for re­pairs, it is done prop­er­ly.

“We want to make sure we have greater col­lab­o­ra­tion with our sup­pli­ers, even those do­ing re­pairs and even those who are per­son­al con­trac­tors who we use from time to time,” the act­ing CoP said.

Ben­jamin said the ser­vice was in dis­cus­sions to es­tab­lish Mem­o­ran­dums of Un­der­stand­ing(MOU) to im­prove the qual­i­ty of main­te­nance work on ve­hi­cles.

“We are al­so look­ing at the is­sue of dri­vers dri­ving ve­hi­cles. I think, some­times, we dri­ve reck­less­ly. We want to en­sure greater train­ing and even mon­i­tor­ing of our of­fi­cers dri­ving ve­hi­cles—some new tech­nol­o­gy that’s go­ing to help us gauge that.

“We are al­so look­ing at our OPR that deals with pro­cure­ment and dis­pos­al. So even with that, when we are deal­ing with dis­pos­al, in par­tic­u­lar. When we deal with our dis­pos­al com­mit­tee, we will hire an ex­pert with us to guide us,” he added.

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

Of the $1 bil­lion spent by the TTPS be­tween 2013 and 2023, at least $299 mil­lion was spent on pur­chas­ing ve­hi­cles, $368 mil­lion on main­te­nance and $172 mil­lion on rentals.

Be­tween 2014 and 2023, the TTPS has spent up­wards of $25 bil­lion over­all, Fi­nance Min­istry doc­u­ments stat­ed.